In the latest GTR Trade Insights podcast episode, we sat down with some of the leading voices in digital trade to dive into one of the most debated topics in the industry right now: why digital trade adoption has proved so difficult, what the industry got wrong, and where the next wave of innovation may come from.
Listen to the full GTR Trade Insights podcast episode
To help bring this issue’s cover feature to life, we were joined by Joshua Kroeker, CEO of Mitigram; Merisa Lee Gimpel, founder of Digital Trade Works and product enablement lead at Enigio; and Patrick DeVilbiss, head of product for trade and supply chain finance at CGI, whose Trade360 platform powers the back-office trade operations of some of the world’s largest banks, for a candid discussion on the state of digital trade, and what comes next for the sector.
Digital trade fatigue is real – but so is the optimism
After years of effort and investment by banks, corporates and fintechs, there is a growing sense of fatigue stemming from slow progress and uneven adoption. Kroeker pointed out that “investment and interest in digital trade finance is sort of like waves – the last few were quite big, but maybe their impact wasn’t so big, and I think that has certainly caused a bit of a longer pause in investment and excitement around digital trade” in recent years.
Lee Gimpel, who previously held senior roles at Citi, Lloyds and Revolut, also noted that initial expectations of a “digital trade revolution” set the industry up for failure.
“Of course, there is fatigue because, for me, it’s more of a marathon than a sprint,” she said.
The progress is still there, argued DeVilbiss – it “just isn’t as visible as ‘we got one platform that stood up and solved everything’. It’s a lot of different smaller entities that are slowly solving digital trade.”
“Of course, there is fatigue because, for me, it’s more of a marathon than a sprint.”
Merisa Lee Gimpel, Digital Trade Works
Moreover, there was agreement that the next phase of growth is coming. Kroeker said: “Right now, it’s an exciting time to be in digital trade because we all know the next wave is coming, and it’s all about how big it’s going to be.”
What went wrong and what worked
Looking back at the industry’s first digitalisation push, the consensus was that many initiatives failed not because of the technology itself, but because proponents couldn’t convince users to adopt it.
“Having a consortium of large corporates or banks all trying to make decisions on what the future is going to be – they’re all driven by very different things – so the technology worked, but it was sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Kroeker, a former chief product officer at trade finance platform Contour.
Lee Gimpel also noted some of the survivors of the early era, such as Komgo and Enigio, stayed relevant because they minimised the burden on users and solved specific problems.
“Having a consortium of large corporates or banks all trying to make decisions on what the future is going to be – they’re all driven by very different things – so the technology worked, but it was sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Joshua Kroeker, Mitigram
The future of interoperability and AI
One concern across the trade finance landscape is that the growing number of platforms in the sector have historically struggled to interconnect. DeVilbiss said the future “isn’t necessarily fewer platforms”, but rather “easier connectivity to ERPs [enterprise resource planning systems]”.
As for whether AI may become the catalyst for the paperless trade future that blockchain once promised, all three guests believed the potential for change is huge – but DeVilbiss warned that “nothing is a silver bullet”.
“I think we’re at a step change for how trade works.”
Patrick DeVilbiss, CGI
“Blockchain didn’t end well, but it did do some good things – it brought the industry together to solve common problems, and I think that’s technology at its best,” Kroeker said. According to Lee Gimpel, “agentic AI can be the next thing”.
“I think we’re at a step change for how trade works,” said DeVilbiss.
