An opportunity for financial institutions and corporates to understand trace:original, a unique document technology to create and manage digital negotiable instruments and documents of title in accordance with the MLETR.
Noting an increased use of digital alternatives to paper-based forms of communication and authentication processes in international trade, the United Nation’s Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) has developed the Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (MLETR) that provides a workable framework to facilitate the use of digital original documents as negotiable instruments. It focuses on the concept of functional equivalence that signifies the ability of a technical solution to demonstrate the key properties of a physically signed paper document.
The MLETR has already been adopted by Bahrain, Singapore and Abu Dhabi Global Market. It is also envisioned, strongly supported by the ICC, that the UK will adopt laws aligned with the MLETR in 2022.
The International Trade & Forfaiting Association (ITFA) has established the Digital Negotiable Instruments (DNI) initiative to digitise guarantees, bills of exchange and promissory notes in the most pragmatic way. Furthermore, ITFA developed “digital document” (dDOC) specifications that provide a vendor-agnostic technology-based framework to enable digital original documents to act the same way as paper originals.
The specifications are built around four main technological requirements that include the security of the digital document file, electronic signatures, DLT for the digital notary and possession through cryptographic key pairs.
Therefore, when a digital original document is created with a dDOC compliant solution, such as Enigio’s trace:original, it will be perfectly aligned with the guiding requirements laid out in the MLETR having all the properties of a paper document.
The demo, ITFA dDOC Manager and dDOC Notary Service
The demo environment consists of two parts:
- ITFA dDOC Manager. Here, it is possible to create and manage trace:original documents. The dDOC Manager is open for members of the ITFA DNI initiative.
- The ITFA dDOC Notary Service. This is a notary service supporting all trace:original documents. Here anyone can check, amend, transfer or invalidate already created original trace:original documents in their local browser. It is open for all, there are no fees and no need for any specific software. The service does not require anyone to share any business data.
With the demo environment financial institutions and corporates can freely test all the steps to digitally create, exchange and manage any type of documents such as bank guarantees bills of exchange, promissory notes, bills of lading etc.
The objective of launching the demo system is to understand the necessity and the usability of digital original documents across various channels including e-banking, EBICS and SWIFT’s FileAct. Moreover, corporates can assess the impacts that the integration of technology brings within the banks’ own environment.
Click here to learn more about the ITFA dDOC Demo environment.
Sign up for the ITFA dDOC Manager.