The International Chamber of Commerce’s Digital Standards Initiative (DSI) has launched a new tool to track which countries are on the path to ratifying the United Nations Convention on Negotiable Cargo Documents, a treaty set to allow cargo documents to go fully digital.
The tool maps how individual economies are progressing towards becoming parties to the treaty – which creates a standard legal basis for cargo documents to be issued, transferred and enforced electronically across borders, and was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2025 after years in the making.
Previously, the only document of title in trade finance was the bill of lading, which only covered the transport of goods by sea.
But under the new convention, all modes of transport will be covered, including air, road and rail, by a single electronic document. Banks can use the document as collateral, enabling lenders to provide trade finance more easily.
The tracker maps each economy’s progress across six stages, from awareness to ratification, “bringing transparency into a process that traditionally is difficult to observe from the outside”, the DSI said.
The digital trade standards group added the “early picture is encouraging”, with 28 economies “already engaging” with the Negotiable Cargo Documents (NCD) Convention. Ten signatures are still needed for the convention to enter into force.
The new tool builds on a previous successful model, the MLETR Tracker, which monitors adoption of the Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records – a legal framework designed by the UN Commission on International Trade Law to give electronic documents the same legal standing as their paper-based counterparts, such as bills of lading, promissory notes and warehouse receipts.
The DSI’s managing director, Pamela Mar, recently told GTR that the MLETR tracker campaign “has been quite successful” and helped put the legislation “on the map”.
Around 62.5% of global exports now originate from economies that have either adopted, aligned with, or committed to aligning with MLETR, up from just 34.3% in October 2023, according to the DSI.
“We have learned from the creation and launch of the MLETR tracker that visibility on states’ adoption of policy can drive business interest and commitment to adopt digital trade practices,” Mar said of the new negotiable cargo documents tracking tool.
“It’s our hope that the NCD – being a ‘fast track’ to MLETR alignment – can provide transparency on the consideration by states of the NCD, and thus inject momentum to the movement to digitalise trade processes worldwide.”
