Break the eBL silos: Why interoperability is the missing link in digital trade

This article is brought to you by The Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA).

The promise of industry-wide adoption of electronic Bills of Lading (eBLs) has been hampered by a fragmented, siloed landscape of proprietary platforms. Despite decades of trials, eBL uptake remains dismal – 45 million bills of lading are issued by ocean carriers yearly and only around 5% were electronic. A major culprit is a lack of widespread interoperability of the systems that manage the eBLs.

Today’s eBL world is dominated by closed systems. Each platform requires all parties – shippers, carriers, banks, consignees – to be onboarded under its own rules and onto its own platform. If a counterparty isn’t on the same platform, digital trade often grinds to a halt, reverting to paper or costly workarounds. No wonder eBL adoption has stalled: the network effect is broken when every platform is a walled garden.

Senior executives across shipping lines, digital trade platforms, and policymakers are rightly asking: How can we work across these silos? How can we enable an eBL issued on one system to be accepted on another, legally and securely, without needing everyone involved in the trade transaction to be on a single platform? The answer lies in embracing interoperability as a first principle. In this piece, we’ll examine the current interoperability efforts – from industry standards to bilateral integrations – and explain why TradeTrust, an open-source and neutral framework, offers the most feasible and scalable solution to connect the digital trade ecosystem. TradeTrust can unlock cross-platform interoperability through portable documents by complementing existing platforms (not competing with them), ultimately accelerating global trade digitalisation.

Read: How the electronic bill of lading (eBL) is transforming digital trade

The siloed landscape: Why eBL adoption has stalled

It’s no secret that eBL adoption has been sluggish.

According to the FIT Alliance’s 2024 survey, 71% of respondents identified technological and platform interoperability concerns as a key barrier to eBL adoption. Earlier analysis also described eBL platforms as ‘walled gardens’, meaning all participants must use the same platform to transact, highlighting the need for interoperable solutions. Approximately ten years ago, when the International Group of P&I Clubs began approving these legal rulebooks for eBL systems, each platform became a closed ecosystem. An eBL issued on Platform A could not simply “handover” to Platform B in mid-transaction – there was no common legal agreement or technical channel to allow that. Without interoperability, eBLs cannot move between platforms in real time as parties are bound by different contracts, forcing everyone onto one platform or back to paper.

The result?

A shipper on Platform X cannot endorse an eBL to a bank on Platform Y, or a carrier using Platform A cannot surrender the eBL to a consignee on Platform B – unless one party abandons their platform and joins the other’s. This forces parties to join multiple platforms, adding usage fees, system management complexity, and the burden of tracking multiple login credentials. These legal and technical roadblocks have made eBL usage fragmented and rare, despite the technology being available.

An industry survey by FIT Alliance found that while awareness of eBLs is high, only 21% of responding banks currently accept eBLs – citing lack of interoperability as a key cause of hesitancy. In other words, everyone is waiting on everyone else, stuck in separate digital camps. The absence of a common highway between these camps has kept digital Bills of Lading from reaching critical mass.

Interoperability efforts: DCSA, DNI Initiative, and Platform Partnerships

The industry recognises interoperability as the “missing link” to scale eBL adoption. Several models have emerged to bridge the gap:

• DCSA’s standards-based approach

The Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA), backed by major carriers, has led a collaborative push for eBL platform interoperability. DCSA’s framework defines a standardised API called PINT for bilateral platform integration, a Multilateral Service Provider Interoperability Agreement (legal rulebook between platform providers), and a Control Tracking Registry to track which platform holds a given eBL at any time.

In March 2025, this group achieved the first proof-of-concept of a standards-based eBL transfer between platforms, with all four key pillars addressed – technical connectivity, legal terms, liability allocation, and the International Group of Protection and Indemnity (IG P&I) Clubs insurance approval. Recently, the IG P&I Clubs approved new interoperability clauses developed via DCSA’s efforts, which eBL providers like edoxOnline and IQAX have added to their terms.

This allows eBLs to move between IG-approved systems if certain conditions (like using a legally-recognised electronic trade law) are met. DCSA’s model is a big step forward, standardising how platforms can “talk” to each other.

• ITFA’s digital negotiable instruments (DNI) Initiative

In trade finance, the International Trade & Forfaiting Association (ITFA) has been actively advancing the digitisation of negotiable instruments via its Digital Negotiable Instruments (DNI) Initiative. The focus here is on fully digitising promissory notes and bills of exchange – instruments akin to eBLs in that they require exclusive control and transfer.

The DNI blueprint combines advanced document technology, electronic signatures, and distributed ledger technology (DLT) (blockchain) with appropriate legal frameworks. Notably, ITFA helped lobby for reforms like the UK Electronic Trade Documents Act 2023 to legalise digital negotiable instruments. While DNI is geared towards trade finance instruments (e.g. digital promissory notes or electronic bill of exchange (eBoE)), its principles of techno-legal interoperability and document portability parallel what’s needed for eBLs. In fact, solutions emerging from the DNI initiative (such as Enigio’s Trace:Original for digital original documents) can complement eBL platforms by enabling documents to move outside a single platform environment.

• Bilateral platform integrations

Several eBL providers have taken matters into their own hands by forging direct integrations or interoperability pilots with each other.

A prime example came in March 2025, when carrier Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) (on the IQAX eBL platform) successfully transferred an eBL to a major oil & gas customer on the ICE CargoDocs platform, using the Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN) blockchain as a secure registry. This cross-platform eBL transaction – governed by UK law (under the UK Electronic Trade Documents Act) – was enabled by a joint liability agreement between the platforms and a shared blockchain record to ensure only one original exists. It was the first of its kind in container shipping, and OOCL’s managing director hailed it as an innovation that improves customer service and a “more efficient and secure global trade ecosystem”.

Likewise, platforms Enigio (a fintech solution for digital original documents) and TradeGo (a China-based eBL platform) recently integrated their systems to allow a Europe-to-China shipment to be completed entirely with e-documents, transferring an eBL from Sweden to China under English law, demonstrating interoperability to drive digital trade.

These pilot projects prove that when two platforms collaborate, they can technically and legally bridge their eBLs – albeit with custom agreements or one-off integrations in each case.

Each of these efforts – standardisation via DCSA, trade finance initiatives via ITFA, and bilateral partnerships – brings the industry closer to a world where eBLs can move as freely as paper. They address the problem from slightly different angles but share the same goal: making eBLs more universally transferable. However, many of these approaches still require complex coordination, proprietary agreements, or central registries. What’s needed is a truly open, neutral “highway” for eBLs that any platform or company can use, without negotiating bespoke deals each time. This is where TradeTrust comes in.

In the next part, we’ll dive into how TradeTrust creates the open highway for global trade interoperability.