Surecomp, a provider of trade finance systems to banks and corporates, has partnered with Swedish fintech Enigio to add digital original documents into its cloud-based solution.

The tie-up embeds Enigio’s  trace:original digital trade finance documentation product into the Surecomp system, enabling Surecomp customers to create, manage and exchange digital trade documents such as letters of credit and bank guarantees in their original state.

Originally launched in 2019, trace:original is a blockchain-based solution that enables users to create digital documents, prove and transfer ownership and validate that a digital document is the same version as the original.

Enigio says that trace:original is designed as a functional equivalent of paper documents, and is fully compliant with both the United Nation’s Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (MLETR) and the International Trade and Forfaiting Association’s dDOC specifications.

While all digital documents created using trace:original are stored “off chain” by the document holder, meaning document content is kept decentralised and confidential, the document identity and evidence of amendments are registered on the blockchain in the form of cryptographic hash-references. This allows anyone with a copy of the document to verify its authenticity against the ledger.

By linking up with service providers with adjacent offerings, Surecomp says it hopes to create something of a one-stop shop for the digitalisation of global trade, which faces barriers to adoption in some part due to the confusing array of solutions that are available.

“From our perspective, this is just one piece of what’s going to become a much bigger puzzle,” Enno-Burghard Weitzel, Surecomp’s senior vice-president of strategy and business development tells GTR. “We recognise that every company has its own respective area of expertise, and we can’t be all things to all people. Partnerships such as this are all about added value for the client, and in order to solve some of the most pressing issues facing trade today, every actor needs to get better at collaboration. That is how we create an ecosystem where everyone works together for the greater good of global trade.”

“We see this partnership as critical to the evolution of creating an industry standard for digital trade,” adds Patrik Zekkar, CEO at Enigio. “Surecomp together with Enigio can now provide customers with the confidence to digitise trade documentation with interoperability and MLETR compliance without the worry of lagging behind.”