Digitalization in trade finance continues to gain momentum in Asia with Standard Chartered adding another industry milestone, partnering with tech firm Traydstream to leverage their trade document matching service capabilities.

In order to help clients shift away from conventionally manual and time-consuming data matching processes, Standard Chartered’s partnership will leverage Traydstream’s platform populated by data and artificial intelligence-based matching tools. The solution aims to prevent trade financing cycle delays and potential impact to working capital needs – an issue made all the more important in the region due to an ongoing trade war.

Standard Chartered will first offer the document matching service to clients in Singapore before rolling it out to its key trade export markets globally. 

Fintech in Trade Finance 

According to Standard Chartered’s global head of documentary trade product management, Samuel Mathew, its decision to partner with Traydstream was due to the tech firm’s platform capabilities and fit with its emerging markets footprint. 

«This strategic agreement further builds on the Bank’s export capabilities by allowing our clients to reduce discrepancies in their trade documents with Traydstream’s data and AI-based matching tools,» Mathew said.

Standard Chartered’s efforts to leverage financial technology in trade finance are not limited to document matching. It is part of an eight-bank alliance that jointly developed «Voltron», a trade finance platform, on which HSBC – one of the developers – recently executed its first yuan-denominated blockchain-based transaction.