Enigio, a Swedish fintech employing blockchain to digitalise trade finance documents, says it has signed an agreement with the International Federation of Freight Forwarders Associations (FIATA), to add its trace:original offering to the solutions supporting the electronic FIATA bill of lading (eFBL) standard.

The trace:original digital solution can also replace all paper documents in trade, including letters of credit (L/Cs), bills of exchange, certificates, packing lists and invoices.

Interoperability

The solution aims to provide a flexible and interoperable solution where documents can be accessed by or transferred to any party in the supply chain without the requirement of the receiver being a member of the solution or a specific platform.

The eFBL open standard is accessible to all software and technology providers and FIATA's solution also includes a document verification system aimed at ensuring authenticity, identification and traceability of e-documents issued by freight forwarders.

All stakeholders are able to verify the validity of a document, the identity of its issuer as well as the integrity of its content.

Surecomp partnership

Earlier this year Enigio announced its partnership with Surecomp to enable its customers to create, manage and exchange digital trade documents such as L/Cs and bank guarantees (DC World News, 25 February 2022).

Geneva-based FIATA is a nongovernmental, membership-based organisation representing freight forwarders in some 150 countries representing an industry of 40,000 freight forwarding and logistics firms worldwide.

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