eCommerce System for Negotiable Bill of Lading and Flexible Payment Options

Abstract

Documentation plays a vital role in the international trade. In the seaborne trade transactions there are several documents being manipulated. Bill of Lading is the key document utilized in the international trade which acts as document of receipt for cargo, evidence for contract between shipper and the carrier and importantly a document of title. Paper document processing is extremely labor and cost intensive and also they can be easily forged and also there is no confidentiality hence there exist a risk of trade secrets being revealed. Due to those reasons the international trade research groups have tried to develop electronic platform for handling international trade transactions.There were four major attempts have been identified as SEADOCS,@GlobalTrade, Bolero and TradeCard with their associated uniqueness. Anyway the adaptation towards electronic implementations were unexpectedly slower in history. UNCTAD’s expert group has researched on the issues associated with the utilization delay and they have highlighted the negotiation function of the Bill of Lading is mostly utilized in the international trade and apparently none of the above solutions directly supportive to negotiation function with required conveniences in the international trade. Hence the research has been focussed thoroughly on the implementation of eCommerce system with negotiable Bill of Lading function including flexibility in payment negotiation as well as to ensure integrity with non repudiation and confidentiality as required. The solution was named as SecureTransit which has been bundled with the features required for future world for international trade automation. The new solution has been called as SecureTransit product name hereafter.