Antiquated Paperwork Leaves $25 Trillion of Trade Open to Fraud

They are relatively easy to fake. Frequently get lost. And can add huge amounts of time to any journey. Yet paper documents still rule in the $25 trillion global cargo trade with four billion of them in circulation at any one time.

It is a system that has barely changed since the nineteenth century. But that dependence on bits of paper being flown from one party to another has become a vulnerability for companies which move and finance the world’s resources around the globe.

In one high profile case, banks including ING Groep NV discovered in 2020 that they had been given falsified bills of lading — shipping ...