UCP 600

TFG spoke to UCP 600 expert David Meynell, senior technical advisor for the ICC Banking Commission and digital rules advisor to the Centre for Digital Trade and Innovation, to discuss the evolution of the UCP 600 and supplementing rules for documentary credits.

For decades, trade document checkers at banks have mastered the crucial, time-consuming, and somewhat niche skill of manually reviewing complex documents to ensure they meet international standards. 

This article looks at the URDTT as it is applied to the first known commercial application: the eDTT Workspace.

When searching for a definition of documentary credit, the Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credits (UCP 600) is the best place to start. 

Your Monday morning coffee briefing from TFG. The UK’s post-pandemic recovery is weakening as inflation worries hit record highs, according to a new British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) survey.

Although UCP 600 and ISBP 745 offer no specific provisions for partial confirmations of letters of credit (LCs), MonetaGo’s Tat Yeen Yap says they are not only possible, but are “straightforward and efficient”.

Letters of credit emerged in Europe in the 1800s. However, in their early days the functionality of letters of credit was limited, due to the non-uniformity of national laws. 

Merchants would go on voyages for several weeks, if not months, in a caravel, carrack or clipper to the Far East, or elsewhere, to buy cotton, wool, tea, spices or other commodities. They would be equipped with a Letter of Credit in their trunk, often handwritten by the clerk of their high street banks.

Trade and supply chain finance provide innovative solutions for the working capital gap faced by growing companies.

Letters of credit are the oldest and most common type of short term trade finance, famously described as the “lifeblood of international commerce,” with some commentators suggesting their use stretches back to 3000 BC. What makes them so successful?

Since the inception of UCP 600, trade finance professionals, in particular, the letter of credit community, have been discussing the need for and consequences of modifications and exclusions to the rules in commercial LCs issued under UCP 600.

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.

The District Export Council of San Diego and Imperial Valley (SDIDEC) has sponsored the first workspace for ICC eRules guidelines for digital trade transactions.

Has digital trade finally arrived with the ICC eRules guidelines? John Dunlop explains how this might be true.

TFG’s Deepesh Patel spoke to ITFA’s Chairman, Sean Edwards, about the ITFA Structured Letters of Credit Working Group, and the emergence of Structured Letters of Credit as a variant of Traditional LCs.