Paper bills of exchange have financed global trade for centuries. Clay tablets. Handwritten notes. Couriers running documents across continents. And somewhere along the way, someone decided that a $50 million commitment to pay should travel by post.
That era is over.
In a recent webinar hosted by Digital Trade Works and Enigio, four of the sharpest practitioners in trade finance sat down to talk through what digital negotiable instruments actually look like in the real world — not in theory, not in pilot, but at scale. The conversation covered everything from the fundamentals to a bill of exchange closed in five hours on New Year's Eve.
Here's what they said.
First, why bills of exchange at all?
Natasha Condon, Global Head of Trade Sales & EMEA Trade Region Head at JPMorgan Chase, opened with the basics — and made a compelling case that the bill of exchange deserves more credit than it gets.
"They're really simple," she said. "And I know that seems like a very basic thing, but many forms of working capital and commitment to pay get very legally complex, very fast. And the good old bill of exchange — these have been around for a very, very long time as a very simple commitment to pay."
The mechanics: a buyer commits to pay a set amount on a set date. The seller can then transfer that commitment to a third party — a bank, a financer — who has exactly the same legal rights to collect. No performance risk. No invoice disputes. Just a clean, transferable promise to pay.
The problem, historically, has been paper. "If I wish to commit a payment to Marissa," Condon explained, "she has to physically send it to me. I have to sign it, send it back. And when that bill is worth $50 million, you can imagine people get fairly nervous."
COVID taught the industry what nervous looks like at scale. Couriers stopped. Documents stalled. Goods sat at ports. "In the long run, nobody wants to be trading on paper," Condon said. "I do not believe you would find any individual in global trade who actively wants to be trading on paper."
The legal moment that changed everything
The webinar was held on a notable date: June 3rd — the day New York enacted Article 12 of the UCC, making electronic bills of exchange legally equivalent to paper under New York law.
For Condon, this was significant. "English law and New York law — these are two of the most common legislative structures used for global trade. Every time one of those really big trading nations passes the MLETR legislation, what it does is it allows all the bills of exchange governed by that particular legal construct to go digital. And that just happened in New York today."
The UK had already moved in September 2023. Singapore is live. More markets are following. The legal foundation is being laid, corridor by corridor.
What it looks like in practice: three case studies
JPMorgan × MTN: EU supplier, South African buyer, all digital
MTN, the South African telco, was already running a paper bill of exchange structure through JPMorgan to extend payment terms to a European device supplier — letting the buyer pay later, the supplier get paid sooner. When English law changed to permit digital bills, JPMorgan moved fast.
"We converted that whole program over to digital as quickly as we possibly could," Condon said, "which made everyone very happy. When you've got an EU country, an operations team in the UK, and a South African buyer in South Africa, the paper version becomes very clunky, very fast."
The result: a working capital structure that was already good became seamless.
Lloyds Bank × UK house builders: from weeks to intraday
Jon Boran, Head of Future Products at Lloyds Corporate & Institutional, described a use case that most wouldn't associate with digital trade: UK house builders purchasing land using promissory notes.
On paper, the process was grinding. "Documents were couriered at least three times," he said. "That whole documentary collation process was taking between one and two weeks. But with delays in completion dates, last-minute price changes — that one to two weeks turns into three to four weeks, five to six weeks."
With trace:original, the dynamic reversed. Signing links went out via DocuSign, integrated directly into the distributed ledger. Possession stayed with Lloyds. "The first transaction was completed within a day. Now we regularly complete these intraday." For the past two years, 100% of these transactions have been digital. Not most of them — all of them.
Mercore Group × Kenya-Belgium: a deal that couldn't exist on paper
Anthony Wadsworth-Hill, Co-founder, CBO & Deputy CEO of Mercore Group, told the most striking story of the session.
On New Year's Eve, a Kenyan exporter of pyrethrin — the active ingredient in organic insecticides — came to Merco at 10am. They had a receivable against a Belgian buyer that hadn't yet been drawn as a bill of exchange and financed. They wanted it done before close of books.
"This was a transaction that would not have been possible in the paper world," Wadsworth-Hill said. The bill was created on trace:original. DocuSign signing links went to the Kenyan drawer, then the Belgian buyer. Each signature was captured on the ledger. Mercore discounted the instrument; Lloyds sent the funds. The Kenyan customer confirmed receipt of US dollars at 3pm.
Door to door: five hours. On New Year's Eve.
Scaling it: the Matalan story
Sue Ashworth, Senior Trade Finance Specialist at Matalan, spoke about what moving from pilot to scale actually requires — and it isn't just technology.
"Scaling up is the most challenging part of DNIs," she said plainly. "While the benefits are clear, adoption requires confidence and trust from all parties involved."
Matalan's approach was systematic. Ashworth engaged directly with suppliers and international banks, explaining the value. She addressed legal concerns head-on — confirming that digital acceptances were governed by English law, jurisdiction of English courts. She made sure counterparties knew that documents could be converted back to paper if a jurisdiction required it. "This flexibility helped alleviate concerns, particularly around international suppliers who are not fully transitioned to digital processes yet."
The results are now measurable. With China transactions running through TradeGo, Matalan cut the transaction cycle from 40 days to under 24 hours. Today, 60–65% of their documentary collections are processed via digital promissory note or digital bill of exchange — over 500 transactions annually, around $30 million in value.
Matalan also took on the role of document issuer itself, which accelerated things further. "This significantly accelerated the turnaround times," Ashworth said, "enabling us to receive collections within 24 hours."
The adoption barrier isn't where you think
When the webinar audience was polled on the biggest barrier to DNI adoption, legal concerns topped the list. The panellists gently pushed back.
"There is never zero legal risk," Condon acknowledged, "but there is relatively less — because the MLETR is a very short piece of legislation. It says: the paper version and the electronic version are the same and should be treated the same. Go Google it. It's really short and simple."
Wadsworth-Hill made an equally pointed observation about where the real friction tends to sit. "Don't assume that the corporates have something against going digital. Several of them may not even know that previously they couldn't do it digitally. It's the bankers and the financiers who know a lot of the detail around the legal aspects — and we are creating adoption barriers for ourselves."
The operational experience, Condon added, tends to do the convincing on its own. "If you are already supporting a paper-based bill of exchange process, and somebody shows you what the electronic version looks like — it's so obviously easier and simpler and quicker that the motivation to jump from one to the other is pretty immediate."
What makes trace:original different
Throughout the session, one name kept coming up in the case studies: trace:original.
Most digital trade platforms work like closed networks. To receive a document, your counterparty has to be a member. To sign something, they need an account. For a bank trying to onboard a supplier in Bangladesh, or a corporate with dozens of trading partners across emerging markets, that requirement doesn't just create friction — it kills adoption. You end up digitising the easy relationships and couriering paper to everyone else.
trace:original works the other way around. Only the party creating the document needs to be an Enigio customer. Everyone else — the counterparty receiving it, the bank accepting it, the financier discounting it — can access, verify, and sign it with nothing more than a link. No registration. No platform subscription. No onboarding process to manage.
Wadsworth-Hill described what this looks like in practice: "trace:original is a distributed ledger. It creates an immutable electronic record that links to that digital negotiable instrument. At any moment in time, you know what actions have been taken against that electronic record." Signing links go out via DocuSign or Adobe Sign, integrated directly into the ledger — so each signature event is captured and verifiable, without any party needing to log into a portal.
As Merisa Lee Gimpel, the session's moderator, put it: "It really is a very simple digital flow. You click, you sign, and so on."
That openness is precisely what allowed the New Year's Eve transaction to close in five hours across Kenya, Belgium, and the UK — three jurisdictions, multiple parties, zero platform barriers.
Learn more about how trace:original works →
The takeaway
Bills of exchange aren't new. They're ancient, arguably elegant, and proven. What's new is that they no longer need paper to work.
The legal frameworks are in place — and expanding. The case studies are real and replicable. The technology is live. What's left is the decision to start.
"If you show a corporate that it's easy and usable and safe," Condon concluded, "they will jump at the opportunity."
The paper era of trade finance didn't end with a bang. It ended with a signing link.