TradeTrust, is a framework that comprises globally accepted standards to enable trusted interoperability of electronic trade documents across parties (business and government alike), and is offered open-source (free) as a public good to any and all parties.

TradeTrust aims to provide a comprehensive digital solution to deal with the two key types of documents in international trade; (a) Verifiable Documents (e.g. Certificate of Origin); and (b) Transferable Documents (e.g. title documents such as Bill of Lading) providing a means to verify the (1) Authenticity; (2) Source; and (3) Legally Valid Performance Obligation Transfer.

Today, most shipping and the financial process which supports shipping - Trade Finance - is still paper based. A single shipment involves; (i) many parties across different sectors; (ii) many exchanges of information; (iii) many siloed systems; (iv) at varying levels of digital maturity. This is inefficient and outdated. Physical trade document processing and administration is estimated to make-up 20 percent of the total cost of shipping. Goods can arrive at their destination while the paper documents are still making their way through the supply chain, leading to delays in cargo delivery.

Observed benefits from the trials include instant authentication and provenance (cutting processing time from days to hours and lowered shipping costs for MSMEs) of documents, reducing risk of fraud (improving financing options for businesses) as well as opening up business opportunities (through inter-operability of platforms). These benefits will in turn create a ripple effect of positive change that reverberates across the entire supply chain ecosystem.

Due to the open-source nature of the framework, enterprising individuals and businesses have utilised the source code to explore more use cases beyond international trade such as the creating of Digital Art pieces and a NFT market.

https://www.tradetrust.io/

• International

• The poor
• Remote and rural communities
• Micro Small Medium Enterprises (MSMEs)

TradeTrust is an open-source project and the source code is freely available on GitHub for all parties to implement. Extensive documentation is provided to guide parties through implementation. Singapore welcomes Governments and Businesses around the world to implement the TradeTrust framework.

TradeTrust is an initiative designed to promote paperless trade and hence reducing the carbon footprint cause by paper documents used in cross-border trade. TradeTrust can also be applied to the use case of Carbon Credits.

At its core, TradeTrust uses ICT to digitalise a sector, in this case International Trade, which is historically resistant to change, and opens up possibilities for true interoperability, end-to-end. Firstly, it helps build a resilient infrastructure, one that is not dependent on single or big ecosystem players, but rather an entire network that can freely trade with one another. Next, it promotes inclusiveness and sustainable industrialisation, through its open-source nature allowing any and all users the opportunity to view the source code freely and apply them accordingly. The eventual implementation is within the digital realm, allowing for scalability to grow its use case and network of partners as well as championing the paperless initiative. Lastly, it fosters innovation through its framework nature, deliberately not affixing itself to a particular sector but rather lending itself to easy implementation across a multitude of sectors through its use of a MLETR, promoting legal harmonisation across jurisdictions as well as globally accepted international Standards.