Fireside chat: Contour, on platforms, competition and the misconceptions of interoperability
By Deepesh Patel Tuesday September 7, 2021
The need for trade digitization has never been more prevalent than it is today, especially with pandemic-induced restrictions emphasizing the inefficiency of paper-based trade. Our Editor, Deepesh Patel sat down with Contour’s CEO and Chief Product Officer, as well as TradeLens’ Head of Strategy and Operations, to discuss how fintech can come together to partner to solve these problems.
Featuring:
- Carl Wegner – CEO, Contour
- Daniel Wilson – Head of Strategy and Operations, TradeLens
- Josh Kroeker Chief Product Officer, Contour
Interviewed by: Deepesh Patel, Editor, Trade Finance Global
The need for trade digitization has never been more prevalent than it is today, especially with pandemic-induced restrictions emphasizing the inefficiency of paper-based trade. With so many innovative startups coming to the scene, many stakeholders are looking towards the power of interoperability to patch together what may otherwise become another siloed industry. Is interoperability the answer to trade digitization in a post-COVID world? And can one company magically solve all of the complex problems we have, in this heavily siloed sector?
Our Editor, Deepesh Patel sat down with Contour’s CEO and Chief Product Officer, as well as TradeLens’ Head of Strategy and Operations, to discuss how fintech can come together to partner to solve these problems.
Global Trade & Blockchain Forum – “Accelerating Trade Digitalization through DLT”
Streamed live on Mar 30, 2021
See agenda here.
ICC, TFG and WTO release the latest research on trade digitalization facilitating MSME financing
By Deepesh Patel Tuesday March 30, 2021
Paris, London, Geneva, 30, March 2021. World Trade Organization (WTO), Trade Finance Global (TFG) and International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) have today launched their latest publication ‘Accelerating trade digitalization to support MSME financing’
This new publication, authored by WTO’s Emmanuelle Ganne and TFG’s Deepesh Patel, dives into the benefits and deployment challenges of eight prominent technologies that have the potential to disrupt the international trade landscape and to facilitate MSME financing. The technologies, which include cloud computing, optical character recognition (OCR), internet of things (IoT), application programming interface (API), distributed ledger technology (DLT), big data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and quantum computing, have been individually identified as either lucrative challenges, rapid rewards, small wins, or downstream ambitions on the basis of interviews with 34 industry experts and 105 survey responses.
The 19 Standardization Projects related to blockchain aiming to glue trade together
A crucial step towards end-to-end trade digitalization is creating an ecosystem that allows for seamless exchanges of data between existing platforms. A recent study from the WTO and TFG highlights 19 initiatives and the recent developments which are working towards digital standards for trade.
By Emmanuelle Ganne, Monday November 2, 2020
Blockchain & DLT in Trade: A Reality Check
By Emmanuelle Ganne, Senior Analyst, Economic Research and Statistics Division, World Trade Organization (WTO) and Deepesh Patel, Editorial Director, Trade Finance Global (TFG), November, 2019
Building on the WTO publication “Can Blockchain Revolutionize International Trade?” authored by Emmanuelle Ganne and TFG’s white paper “Blockchain and Trade Finance”, this study provides an overview of the main projects underway in trade, with a focus on trade finance, shipping, and the digitalization of trade documents, and assesses their stages of maturity. Based on a survey of more than 200 actors in the field, it analyses the key challenges that companies involved in blockchain projects are facing and discusses actions that may need to be taken to allow the technology to truly transform international trade. After years of hype around blockchain, the time has come for a reality check.
We’re living through exciting times. While international trade in goods has seen little innovation since the invention of the container in the 50s, the tedious, labour- and paper-intensive processes required to ship around the world could well become a story of the past thanks to the advent of new technologies, particularly distributed ledger technology (DLT) – colloquially termed “blockchain”.
Rarely has a technology spurred so much hype and hope amongst the trade and trade finance community. Not without reason: The possibilities that blockchain unlocks to track transactions and exchange assets in real-time, in a trusted and highly secure environment using peer-to-peer validation and networks makes it an appealing tool to remove many of the inefficiencies that hinder one of the oldest forms of traditional finance today.
Over the past few years a myriad of projects have been launched to enhance processes related to trade finance, to digitalize trade documentation, and to reduce inefficiencies in transportation and logistics. Some take the form of multi-player consortia and networks, others are building a fabric layer to interconnect these different projects, and others are built to digitize particular aspects of the trade and supply chain.
These international trade actors are changing fast, but how many of these initiatives have moved beyond a proof-of-concept? What are the challenges that these new actors now face as we go past the trough of disillusionment and exploratory phase of DLT in trade?