Bolero International, probably the most established of global trade finance digitisation providers, has been acquired by WiseTech Global, developer of the widely used cloud-based logistics management platform, CargoWise.

By converging WisteTech's physical supply chain offerings for the logistics sector with Bolero's digital financial and trade documentary offerings connecting banks and corporates, the company aims to progress digitisation of trade and expand its global reach.

While its main offering is its electronic bill of lading (eBL), Bolero has developed a range of digital documentation capabilities to facilitate global trade, including its highly advanced Galileo platform which features a letter of credit (L/C) management function.

Logistics customer base

Australia based WiseTech says its customers include over 18,000 of the world's logistics companies across more than 165 countries, including 41 of the top 50 global third-party logistics providers and 24 of the 25 largest global freight forwarders worldwide.

Its CargoWise platform forms an integral link in the global supply chain and executes over 72 billion data transactions annually.

Banks and corporates

Headquartered in the UK, Bolero offers fully digital solutions for carriers to digitise bills of lading, creating eBLs that can be transmitted, endorsed and presented electronically to port authorities, customs, financial institutions, logistics partners and other parties.

With Galileo, which connects to bank and other third-party systems via APIs, corporates can manage all L/Cs, guarantees, ePresentations under L/Cs and open account, documentary collections, and electronic bills of lading on one central platform.

Combined strength

With a network of more than 200 carriers across the globe and some of the world's biggest financial institutions directly connected, the vision for both WiseTech and Bolero is to enable end-to-end, digital-first trade documentation.

This aims to provide straight through processing of all data, converging the physical supply chain with digital financial and trade documentary requirements while offering a single view for all supply chain participants, including manufacturers, cargo owners, carriers, banks and service providers.

The financial terms of the WiseTech's acquisition of Bolero, which was established as a joint venture between the Through Transport Club (TTC) and Swift, have not been publicly disclosed.

This article represents the views of the author and not necessarily those of the ICC or Coastline Solutions.