Temenos Works With essDOCS For Trade Finance Digitization

Paperless trade enabler essDOCS has joined Temenos‘ MarketPlace, allowing for the digitization of shipping and trade documents, according to an announcement.

essDOCS’ CargoDocs solution will be integrated with Temenos Transact, a core banking software. It will allow for the aforementioned digitization, including electronic signing and transfer of original title documents like bills of lading.

With Temenos Transact, customers will have access to an end-to-end solution and one consolidated platform for the whole trade finance value chain, the announcement stated.

“With the integration of the essDOCS platform into Temenos Transact for our trade finance clients, we can help financial institutions further improve their current processes, reducing the number of days that trade documents take to reach advising and issuing banks, and thereby facilitating faster presentation and payment,” said Jenny Alexandrou, senior product manager of Trade Finance for Temenos, in the announcement.

Temenos, a banking software company, works to provide cloud technology to banking capabilities for thousands of institutions globally. The MarketPlace allows banks to use FinTech solutions that work alongside Temenos software, the announcement stated.

And essDOCS works to let users digitally prepare, manage, sign, legally transfer and present trade documents through automation. With CargoDocs, the need for manual paper processes is done away with, according to the announcement.

There’s been a gap in trade finance for years, which experts chalk up to a lack of collaboration, according to PYMNTS. While there has been digitization, there is also a lack of standardization across the complex payments landscape that, coupled with a reliance on legacy tools, makes it hard for everyone to get on the same page.

Mick Fennell, business line director of Payments at Temenos, said the pandemic has had the effect of speeding up the changes to businesses’ payment structures that they had already been contemplating.

He said one change is that companies no longer have months on end to develop new products and services, instead having to adapt as quickly as possible to the digital landscape so payments can flow well. He spoke about the idea of containerization, when payment processing functions can scale easily and quickly.