The Baltic Exchange and TradeFlow Capital Management have announced that they have completed a pilot of a digital escrow transaction system for commodity export trading.
The pilot transaction, executed through TradeFlow, involved a shipment of agri-commodities from India to China and included a secure digital exchange of ownership of the physical commodities and payment.
New services based on the technology will now be made available more widely, the partners said, initially focusing on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in the bulk commodity markets.
The Baltic Exchange already runs an independent escrow service that holds funds on behalf of clients in dedicated escrow bank accounts, a service that is being adapted to meet new uses cases in asset sale & purchase transactions, disputes and managing security for vessel chartering activities.
“Using traditional methods to execute these transfers can result in capital being tied up for many weeks which brings added costs and capital inefficiencies into the whole trade ecosystem,” said John Collis, CRO of TradeFlow.
“We have been impressed by the ease with which we were able to work with the Baltic Exchange and how smooth the entire escrow process has been.”
