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Veridapt, an Australian fintech company, has joined the Singapore Trade Data Exchange (SGTraDEx) as a development partner, bringing its deal workflow management tool onto the data-sharing platform to combat trade finance fraud.

Launched in June this year, SGTraDex is a public-private initiative that seeks to connect ecosystem partners in the local and global supply chains via a common data infrastructure. Using APIs, it facilitates the mobility of information, which otherwise would typically be unavailable or cumbersome to access, between various parties involved in trade.

The platform’s founding participants, which include stakeholders across the supply chain, have developed numerous use cases, the first of which is to prevent trade finance fraud. SGTraDex aims to achieve this by giving banks access to trade data at source, which will enable them to detect attempts by companies to fraudulently obtain financing twice from the same cargo or use bogus documents.

Veridapt says that its partnership with the platform will help achieve this goal. It will integrate its DealFlow application, a single system for all stakeholders to manage activities, transactions and documents at a glance, onto the platform, so that banks, traders and terminals can use it as a one-stop collaborative tool that ensures transaction information is secure and accurate.

Veridapt adds that the system will also include 24/7 physical inventory monitoring that will “complement SGTraDex’s digital infrastructure to enable trade flow participants to securely navigate the shift in both physical and digital trade flows occurring worldwide”.

This partnership marks the latest attempt to stamp out trade finance fraud in Singapore and beyond after the city-state was rocked by the 2020 collapse of oil trading companies Hin Leong and ZenRock amid allegations of duplicate financing and falsified documents.

In the wake of the scandals, a group of international financial institutions along with the Association of Banks in Singapore and government innovation agency Enterprise Singapore developed the Trade Finance Registry (TFR), a database of trade finance transactions that allows banks to determine whether financing is being sought multiple times for the same cargo. Work to roll out the TFR, which is being developed by financial technology provider MonetaGo, is now underway, and go-live is targeted for the fourth quarter of this year.

David Thambiratnam, Veridapt’s CEO, says that the tie-up between his company and SGTraDex will complement this initiative, and others.

“Veridapt and SGTraDex share a common vision to digitise trade flows and create total transparency for all parties,” he says. “By integrating with SGTraDex and leveraging additional platform services and industry ecosystems, such as access to the Singapore Trade Finance Registry and TradeTrust, DealFlow mitigates double-financing risk.”