The UK Electronic Trade Documents Act is here.
Are you ready to go paperless?

Everyone in the trade process will benefit, since it caters for smoother, faster, safer, cheaper and sustainable processes in trade and supply chain management.

For companies, especially SMEs, it will be an enabler for improved efficiency and access to working capital management.

By using a digital bill of exchange, for example, created with trace:original, it will be affordable and easy to set up and execute a transaction. Smaller amounts and short-term receivables are becoming financeable. SMEs will also gain easier access to ECA (export credit agency) guarantees.

It is not always possible to foresee all stakeholders that may come into possession of documents or need to verify the documents. Make sure that the solution you choose also works for your customers and everyone else that might be involved in a document transaction, without requiring onboarding or additional infrastructure.

With trace:original, we solved this by making it possible for anyone to receive, validate, manage, and transfer trace:original documents at a free public web service, traceoriginal.com.  The service requires no onboarding and is accessible with any computer with an internet connection.

The most significant issue to widespread adoption is the vast number of different stakeholders and parties that need to embrace change. Global trade is a fragmented and complex ecosystem, with countless parties interacting across hundreds of markets. Paper documents and manual processes are long-established, universally understood and trusted.

We should, therefore, not expect a sudden leap towards universal digitalisation. Adoption must be seen as a process of transition, involving technological and legislative innovations, and leaving no one behind. Above all, this transition initially has to involve replicating current paper-based processes rather than eliminating them.

With trace:original, the digital process mimics the paper process. Up to the point of printing the document, the processes are the same with the same workflows and the same documents and forms. However, instead of printing the document on physical paper, you create a trace:original digital original document that can be electronically signed and sent digitally. Should there be a need, trace:original documents can also be securely converted to physical documents.

It is not unusual that solutions use crypto currencies to document transactions. Crypto currencies are often volatile and their inherent anonymity may increase risk of abuse for money laundering and other fraudulent purposes. Make sure that your solution for electronic trade records does not risk to come into conflict with your anti-money laundering policies and commitments.

With trace:original we use a dedicated blockchain that is used solely as a public distributed ledger for trace:original documents, still anchoring blocks in other public blockchains. This means that you get all of the certainty and security of blockchain technology, but none of the drawbacks of crypto currencies.

Digitalising your trade documents does not have to mean changing your processes, forms or documents. Make sure that the solution you choose has a minimum impact on your current processes to avoid unnecessary large IT-projects.

With trace:original, you can use the same forms and documents that you use today, but instead of printing them on paper, they are "printed" as digital original files, that can be electronically signed, appended, transferred and invalidated, just like their paper equivalents. The trace:original document combines PDF and structured data. Therefore it is both human readable, recognisable and compatible with current processes and machine readable (interoperability) with possibility to incorporate industry data standards, e.g. JSON data schemas.

Any solution you choose for electronic trade documents (ETDs) needs to fulfill the following to be legally admissible:​

1. the ETD must be distinguishable from any copies, ​
2. must be protected against unauthorised alteration, ​
3. secure that it is not possible for more than one person at any one time to possess the ETD, ​
4. allow any holder to exercise control of the document, and​
5. that a transfer of the ETD deprives any previous holder the control of the ETD.​

Furthermore, some ETDs require that text and signatures can be added after the creation of the document.​

Our trace:original solution for electronic trade documents fulfills all requirements of the Act and can be used for all trade documents listed in the Act.​

Creating electronic trade documents doesn’t have to require a long and expensive IT project.​
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With trace:original we made it possible to start creating electronic trade documents without system integration. You can continue with your current workflow, using the same documents, but instead of printing them on paper, you “print” PDFs digitally and get electronic original documents that can then be electronically signed, transferred, sold, and invalidated. It’s your current process, but digital. This makes the change to paperless cost efficient and effortless. With trace:original it is technically possible to be set up and producing electronic documents within a couple of days.​

System changes are usually work intensive and time consuming with the risk of interrupting services. Make sure that your electronic trade document solution can be implemented alongside your existing systems without the need for big infrastructure changes.​
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With trace:original we designed our solution to work straight out of the box, without the need for any system integration. The solution can then be integrated at a later date if required, allowing for further benefit from digital workflows and automation.​

Electronic documents will decrease time and cost for processing your trade documents radically, contribute to transparency, simplify current and future regulatory compliance and mitigate fraud. Electronic documents can also give access to valuable data regarding the conditions, under which the goods have been transported.

Everyone engaged in trade and trade finance will benefit from paperless trade. However, those who will benefit most are small and medium sized companies who will be able to address new export opportunities that has previously not been economically viable.

Finally, smoother and more efficient supply-chains also contribute to ESG. E.g., currently 50% of all produced food worldwide is wasted, of which approximately 10% is waisted in the supply chain.

Ask the stakeholders you are in contact with if they are willing or capable of handling ETDs.
Here are some examples of important stakeholders:

• Your trading partner
• Your bank
• Your freight forwarder
• Your carrier
• HMRC
• Border Control
• Any issuer if needed certificates regarding the goods. E.g., your local Chamber of Commerce

Electronic documents enable computer systems to read data without the risk of errors in OCR scanning or AI interpretation. However, processing of trade documents will still in many cases continue as a manual process, especially among small and medium sized companies.

Make sure that your electronic-document solution is both humanly and machine readable.

With trace:original, documents are created as PDF files and can be read just as any other PDF. The trace:original PDF is also able to carry any data model and structure, as well as support multiple data models simultaneously for machine readability. All while being fully compliant with the Electronic Trade Documents Act.

Paper documents can cater for any type of content and human readable standards, make sure that your electronic trade document solution is not locked to a specific data model or industry standard for machine readable data. Any industry defined data model, for example in formats like JSON, XML or other standards should be easily supported.

trace:original documents are created as PDF files that can contain any structured data model and format, as well as multiple data models simultaneously. This enables trace:original to support several industry standards in the same document. All while being able to be read manually as any other PDF.

During the document’s lifecycle, new terms might be added or changed, that might require additional signatures. One such example is when a document needs to be endorsed.

In order to be able to cover all possible use cases and being able to replicate your current paper process, make sure it is possible to add new additions to the electronic original while maintaining full integrity audit trail and security of its history. The Electronic Trade Documents Act requires that it should be possible to add new text and signatures to a trade document, but it should not be possible to remove any content for the document to be legally enforceable.

A signature is what ties a signer to a promise described in the text of a document. In trade, many documents need to be unique originals, to avoid double spending, as these documents give title to goods or money.

To be compliant with the Electronic Trade Documents Act, it is necessary that the document must be signed after the promise description is already created and secured in the document (i.e., what you saw is what you signed). Signing the document before the promise description is created is comparable to signing a blank paper that would tie the signer to whatever would be written afterwards.

If a document is appended, new signatures might be required, e.g., when endorsed. For each text addition, if the law requires, signatures must be added after the added text has been written to the document.

The UK Electronic Trade Documents Act (ETDA) states that any compliant system must be reliable. ​

Any system should be evaluated on two sets of criteria:​

• Is the system compliant with ETDA and the Model Law of Electronic Transferable Records (MLETR) from the United Nations UNCITRAL? ​
• Does the system adhere to IT and operational security standards?​

trace:original has been successfully used and was the chosen technology for the first transaction under ETDA. Enigio’s technology, security and operation has been independently verified by multiple third parties e.g. Omegapoint AB and Helios.