It’s a wrap, at the ICC 21st Global Conference on Bank Guarantees in Vienna. We extend our appreciation to Murat Ayik, Neil Chantry, Izabela Czepirska PhD, Barbara Dorner, Vera Economou, Dr Ahmed Hadidi, Mostafa El-Toweiry, Zeynep Ersamut CDCSAdv, Bjoern Hertzer, Amelie Huber-Starlinger, Stephanie Powell, Glenn Ransier, Judith Schmalnauer, Christina Elisabeth Seierup, Lorna Strong, Mireille Troosters & Martin Wolfbauer for sharing their expertise and perspectives with the global trade finance community.

Tunisia’s digitalization strategy – incorporating 192 different initiatives within in its 2026-2030 national development plan – is an ambitious effort to strengthen the economy through digital efficiency, improve service delivery, reduce bureaucracy, and boost investor confidence.  Trade and finance are slated for transformation, if the country can master not just the technical and regulatory challenges, but also the cultural challenges. To fully enjoy the benefits of a digital evolution, a coordinated, multi-layered architecture is needed that can help align national legal reform with international standards.

At the 58th Annual Meeting of the Factors Chain International (FCI), held in Lisbon on 8 June 2026, the ICC Trade Register and FCI announced a strategic cooperation to improve the availability and quality of global data on international factoring and supply chain finance. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) was the main hot topic at Money 20/20 in Amsterdam both in and outside the conference sessions, as well as being the subject of numerous company announcements released at the show. For example, Experian launched its Agent Operating System to help financial services organisations move beyond AI experimentation and safely scale agentic AI.

As global manufacturers navigate more complex supply chains, uneven financing conditions and rising pressure on cash, treasury teams are looking for more flexible ways to manage working capital. For Şişecam, the answer lay in Working Capital Notes™ – a new structure that supports suppliers, preserves continuity and gives treasury greater control over settlement timing – without adding friction to existing processes.

A consortium of leading banks today announced a landmark digital payments initiative designed to connect on-chain financial activity with traditional payment rails, enabling the clearing and settlement of tokenised commercial bank money at scale. 

Foreign exchange (FX) is simply the conversion of one currency type to another. Changing dollars to euros, for example, is FX. For businesses trading internationally, there are risks associated with FX due to how currency markets work and the fact that the value of one currency in relation to another is not static.

Learn more on our foreign exchange topics page.

The session, moderated by Shona Tatchell of the EBRD Trade Facilitation Programme, moved quickly past the familiar case for digitalisation and into the harder question on why, after years of pilots and proofs of concept, has system-wide adoption still not arrived.

Three blockers dominated:

1) Interoperability. The trade finance industry remains the only sector whose response to fragmentation has been to ask everyone to join the same platform. It hasn’t worked. The parallel drawn was to early computing, where the solution wasn’t platform consolidation, it was coming up with common formats. The industry needs its equivalent of the Save As PDF function. Standards that allow records produced at one end to be read at the other, regardless of system.

2) Fragmentation. Digitalisation efforts within governments routinely produce systems that don’t talk to each other, let alone to the private sector. A digital certificate that works in one country, one region or one process but not the next creates a chain that is only as strong as its weakest link.

3) Trust. Legal infrastructure remains uneven. A growing divide is emerging between jurisdictions with comprehensive frameworks for electronic contracts, signatures and transferable records — the UK, US, UAE, Singapore, Mauritius — and those without.

Awareness is the start of any adoption curve. If SMEs disengage at that stage, the industry has already lost.

📍 TF COP Open Meeting | EBRD London | June 2026

Shona Tatchell, Anders Rehnberg, André Casterman, Chris Southworth, Merisa Lee Gimpel, Oswald K., EBRD, BAFT (Bankers Association for Finance and Trade), ITFA, ICC United Kingdom, Digital Trade Works, Asian Development Bank (ADB), TF COP - Trade Finance Conference of Parties

The conference will offer two and a half days of discussions with bankers, and key industry leaders to dive into practical insight and opportunities for networking with professionals across trade, export, and supply chain finance.

TTP, as an official media partner, is delighted to invite you to register now!

At TTP Studios, Trade Treasury Payments (TTP) spoke with Christopher Coppock, Head of Geopolitical and Economic Risk Analysis, Credit Specialties at Marsh and John Plomer, a Senior Vice President, Credit Specialties, Marsh about the growing risks shaping global trade, finance, and lending markets.

We are pleased to introduce the Corporate Treasury and Payments Awards at the TTP Corporate Excellence Awards 2026 on October 7 this year!

Recognising work that creates the greatest impact on the trade finance industry.

These awards were established to celebrate corporates that have demonstrated outstanding initiatives across treasury management, cross-border payments, and fraud and security.

🏆 Corporate Treasury Awards
🏅 Best Treasury Transformation Project
🏅Best Cash and Liquidity Management Solution
🏅Best Treasury Technology Solution
🏅Best Treasury Transformation Initiative (Financial Risk)

🏆 Corporate Payments Awards 
🏅Cross-Border Payments Solution 
🏅Best Payments Modernisation Initiative 
🏅Best Payments Fraud and Security Initiative 
🏅Best Payments Strategy

Applications close in August, 2026

We highly encourage banks, advisors, and partners to nominate your corporate clients. Corporates are welcome to nominate their own teams that have made a real impact.

Their work deserves to be seen!

Nominate now. Link in the comments.

At TTP Studios, Trade Treasury Payments (TTP) spoke with Christopher Coppock, Head of Geopolitical and Economic Risk Analysis, Credit Specialties at Marsh and John Plomer, a Senior Vice President, Credit Specialties, Marsh about the growing risks shaping global trade, finance, and lending markets.

Trade Treasury Payments (TTP) has officially opened nominations for the TTP Corporate Excellence Awards 2026, a new recognition programme that places the corporate end-user at the centre of trade finance. On 7 October 2026 at The Lansdowne Club in London, the ceremony will gather more than 100 industry leaders to celebrate works from corporates that have built outstanding impact in 2025 and 2026. 

Over the past several years, there has been considerable change and pressure in the trade finance and cross-border payments spaces. Yet, as the Asian Development Bank has reported, the trade finance gap, one of the most consequential challenges in the industry today, now sits at $2.5 trillion.

A definitive reference for modern trade finance

The Trade Finance Guide 2026, jointly produced by the International Trade and Forfaiting Association and Trade Treasury Payments, arrives at a moment when global trade is under pressure from geopolitical tension, supply chain disruption and rising operational risk. As the guide notes, the digitisation of trade has begun an unstoppable, if gradual, shift, supported by new legal frameworks such as the Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records. These developments are enabling the creation and use of electronic trade documents and the first examples of end to end digital processing of trade flows. The guide sets out a clear and accessible map of the modern trade finance landscape. It explains how trade finance supports the physical movement of goods across borders, using the goods, receivables and cash generated from the trade as the principal security. It also reflects the growing role of non bank capital, private credit and institutional investors as trade finance continues to mature as an investable asset class.