Digital trade is ready. What will it take to drive adoption? 

From digital readiness to routine adoption

Trade finance has spent much of the last decade building the foundations for digitalization. Electronic trade documents, connected workflows, common standards, and supportive legal reforms have all advanced significantly. Yet adoption remains uneven, and fully digital, end-to-end transactions are still the exception rather than the norm.

The opportunity is significant. According to the DCSA 100% eBL Initiative, only 1.2% of the approximately 45 million bills of lading issued globally were electronic in 2021.¹ Today, major ocean carriers have committed to achieving 100% electronic bill of lading adoption by 2030, highlighting the industry's belief that digital trade is moving from aspiration to reality.²

For many institutions, the central challenge is therefore shifting. The technology and legal frameworks required for digital trade are increasingly available; the harder task is creating the institutional and ecosystem conditions that turn readiness into routine use.

This adoption gap is not driven by a single barrier. Banks must navigate internal approvals, governance, risk, compliance, operational change, and investment priorities. Corporates may not push consistently for digital alternatives, particularly when existing processes still function or counterparties are not ready. Across the ecosystem, each participant can find itself waiting for another to move first. The 2025 FIT Alliance industry update similarly identifies change management, ecosystem readiness, data trust, competing priorities, and first-mover concerns as persistent barriers to wider adoption.³

Why adoption remains a coordination challenge

As Dr. Maria Mogilnaya from CargoX described it, digital trade adoption often becomes a “chicken-and-egg” problem. Corporates may want to avoid the cost and delay of physical documents, while banks may still depend on legacy processes and internal approvals. Technology providers, in turn, need committed use cases before investing in integration. The result is a coordination challenge: the capability exists, but incentives and timing are not yet aligned.

Trust is what connects these barriers. Organizations need confidence that a digital document will be legally recognized, accepted by counterparties, processed across the transaction, and supported by reliable controls. As Dr. Maria Mogilnaya put it, “Trust is such a big and important part of the proposition.” Without that confidence, technical readiness alone will not produce adoption.

Turning proven capability into repeatable transactions

The industry is already demonstrating what is possible. In one cross-platform electronic bill of lading transaction, an exporter in Latin America and a destination in Europe used different platforms supporting the carrier and exporter. The document moved between those platforms within seconds. The example shows that the underlying rails can work across providers and geographies; the next challenge is to make such transactions repeatable rather than exceptional.⁴

A practical path to scaling digital trade

Scaling adoption therefore requires a practical, use-case-led approach. Rather than trying to digitize every transaction at once, banks can start with established trade relationships where there is a shared incentive to change. They can identify corridors with clear legal recognition for electronic trade documents, engage willing customers and counterparties, and focus on processes where digitalization removes a visible source of delay, cost, or operational risk.

The starting point should also be internal. Banks need to map where manual work, exceptions, and delays are concentrated, then identify which policies, controls, and approvals must evolve. This creates a clearer business case and ensures that technology is introduced to solve a defined operational problem rather than as a standalone initiative.

Applying the same principles to AI adoption

The same adoption principles apply to artificial intelligence. AI can support document examination, compliance checks, exception management, and transaction processing, but institutions will progress at different speeds. As Fahad Noor from Cleareye.ai noted, “AI is a tool. It's not something to solve every single role.” Its value lies in augmenting trade finance expertise while maintaining human oversight and control.⁴

Here too, adoption depends on governance as much as capability. Banks need confidence that AI-supported processes are tested against their requirements, explainable where necessary, and fully auditable. Quality assurance, validation before deployment, and clear accountability are essential to building trust in automated outcomes.

Moving from ambition to focused execution

The next phase of trade modernization is therefore not primarily about proving that digital technologies can work. It is about overcoming the institutional barriers that prevent organizations from using them at scale: lengthy approval cycles, governance requirements, legacy processes, uneven corporate demand, and the need to coordinate change across the wider ecosystem.

Digital trade adoption will accelerate when institutions move from broad ambition to focused execution: selecting the right flows, engaging willing customers and counterparties, establishing trusted controls, and proving value one transaction at a time.

Sources

1. Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA), 100% eBL by 2030 initiative, 2023.
2. Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA), DCSA’s member carriers commit to a fully standardised electronic bill of lading by 2030, press release, 2023.
3. FIT Alliance, Top 10 eBL adoption trends of 2025, webinar presentation, 2025.
4. Finastra, From paper to processing: How banks can deliver end-to-end digital trade transactions, on-demand webinar, 2026.