Swedish fintech company Enigio plans to launch a digital envelope product later this month to expand its trace:original offering and improve traceability in digital trade.

The product allows document types, including PDFs, images and those in Enigio’s own format, to be bundled and sent via email, akin to a zip file.

“It’s like a courier pouch, you can put everything in it – but it’s electronic and it’s instant. It came about because the customers we’re talking to are primarily doing letter of credit collections, and they want to be able to send sets of documents,” Enigio director Amanda Evans tells GTR.

Evans believes the current process of sending documents physically creates problems that a digital envelope can fix. By reducing the time taken for documents to arrive, she says it not only speeds up transactions, but ensures everyone has the most up-to-date documents.

“When you send a pouch, it’s not 100% certain that the person it’s addressed to will be the one that opens it. This is a lot more secure,” she says.

“The recipient of the envelope signs that they have received it, and then it’s discarded. They can then create a new envelope without needing to be a subscriber.”

The benefit of this product, Evans says, is its security, speed and traceability: “You want to be able to make sure that you can track absolutely every step of the way, and choose who can see the documents in the envelope.”

This means an exporter can ensure that only the required parties see sensitive documents, such as the commercial invoice, whilst still being able to prove to anyone downstream that they have provided it.

The envelope’s audit trail is stored on a public distributed ledger developed by Enigio. This allows the company to lock access to the envelopes behind one-time passwords sent to the recipient’s email.

Enigio sees the envelope as a “key component” of its software going forward, and it will be included in its base subscription package.

Despite currently focusing on tier-one banks, Enigio hopes to establish itself throughout the trade finance supply chain. “We are looking to become a utility,” she says.  “We’re looking to make sure that this is the fastest way for digitalisation and the most accessible way for all the parties in the trade chain to transact.”

Last year, the company completed its first fully digital trade transaction using trace:original and garnered a €6mn investment led by Lloyds Bank.