(11 September 2025 – Singapore) Asia Pacific importers and exporters are pushing for richer analytics, enhanced automation and documentless trade finance as US tariffs and heightened geopolitical tensions impose unwanted global supply chain uncertainty.
The volatility wrought by tariff disputes has made firms more conscious of their exposure to risks across borders, Bank of America (BofA) observes for Asian Banking & Finance. CFOs and treasurers are seeking faster ways to adjust financing structures when supply chains shift with a key priority reducing reliance on cumbersome paper-based trade finance documentation.
Despite underpinning an estimated US$32 trillion in global economic output, trade finance still relies heavily on manual, paper-based documentation such as letters of credit (LCs) and bills of lading.
While the demand for digital trade solutions is irrefutable, banks and Fintechs have struggled to meet customer expectations which continue to rise sharply. Clients want data to be delivered seamlessly through application programming interfaces (API), and some are partnering with Fintechs for specialised solutions for commodity trading and structured trade finance products.
Industry efforts such as the Bolero digital trade platform in the late 1990s, Bank Payment Obligation (BPO), Contour Trade Network and Swift’s Trade Services Utility (TSU) which shuttered in 2020 after it failed to gain traction. Blockchain trade finance solutions have also largely failed to yield tangible real world results.
Swift’s research note “Digitising trade: the time is now” outlines how the pandemic has magnified the vulnerabilities of manual and paper-based processes in global trade and suggests how efforts to digitise trade could reduce friction in global commerce and support economic growth.
“In the current environment, treasurers would like to focus on stability, predictability as well as cash resilience. Clients expect more robust and comprehensive data prediction that they can use for analytics” commented BofA Managing Director and APAC Head of Trade and Supply Chain Finance, George Fong.
“A lot of parties in the industry or in the supply chain have taken a wait-and-see approach given the industry’s attempts in the past. We’re providing solutions to take out the paper for open account payment processing. Ease and speed of adoption have become critical. Rapid onboarding lets firms pivot quickly as tariffs or trade restrictions force changes in supplier markets – we are able to onboard 80 suppliers in China and India in a matter of one week” Fong added.
“We’ve started embarking on a digital transformation project over the last few years, and this is going to span out for the next few years. BofA is responding with its CashPro and CashPro Trade platforms, which help corporate clients manage treasury, trade, and credit in one system. This is going to decide and transform our trade and supply chain finance business through the next couple of years.”