#TTPulse: ICC United Kingdom launches TradeTech Directory to accelerate digital transformation in global trade

🔸ICC United Kingdom has introduced the TradeTech Directory, the first comprehensive guide to verified technology providers advancing the digital transformation of international trade.

🔸The directory features trusted TradeTech companies delivering solutions that reduce costs, speed up processes, simplify operations, enhance security, and promote sustainability across global trade.

🔸Covering innovations such as digital identities, interoperable electronic documents, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and automation, the directory highlights technologies reshaping the movement of goods, data, and finance across borders.

🔸Businesses adopting these digital solutions have reported significant improvements, including cost reductions of up to 80%, faster goods movement by 80%, unlocking $100 billion in SME liquidity, and productivity gains of 60%.

🔸The TradeTech Directory 2026 is an essential resource for businesses, policymakers, and financiers seeking to engage with the leading innovators driving the future of trade.

#tradetech #digitaltrade #globaltrade #blockchain #AI #automation #SMEfinance #ICCUK

🏛️ Missing architecture; improving access to finance

🇬🇧 At yesterday’s ICC United Kingdom conference, Deepesh Patel, Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief of Trade Treasury Payments (TTP), moderated a discussion on what it will take to move from legal reform to real digital trade infrastructure.

With insights from Nuria Vegas (GLEIF), Parvaiz Dalal (Citi), Naresh Aggarwal (ACT), and Neil Shonhard (MonetaGo), the session tackled the missing rails beneath the UK’s new Electronic Trade Documents Act (ETDA), and why invoice registries, digital identity, and public digital infrastructure must now come together.

As ICC UK’s Next-Generation Trade Corridors report highlights, digitalising trade could unlock $10 trillion+ in efficiency gains. Yet the UK still lags behind India and Singapore, where live registries have unlocked $100 billion in SME working capital and boosted liquidity by 220%.

✅ The tech is here.

✅The law is here.

💡 What’s missing is scale, trust, and collective will.

We were delighted to be media partners at this event.

How do we connect financial and physical supply chains, and what are the blockers?

At today’s ICC United Kingdom conference, Panel 4 explored how financial and physical supply chains can finally converge, from customs and data-sharing to trade finance integration.

Moderator Sylwia Nowak MSc, MCIEx (Safran) led a lively session with Yann Duval (United Nations ESCAP), Professor David Hughes (Teesside University), Surath Sengupta (Lloyds Banking Group) and Jane Smith (JOINTINE PRODUCTS (LINCOLN) LIMITED Products) on what’s still holding back adoption.

According to Lloyds Bank, here are the top five blockers to enable digital trade:

1️⃣ Legal uncertainty – MLETR laws exist, but global recognition lags.
2️⃣ Ecosystem readiness – too few banks and freight forwarders are live.
3️⃣ Awareness and understanding – SMEs need simpler on-ramps.
4️⃣ Interoperability – systems still can’t “talk” across platforms.
5️⃣ Data standardisation – trade must move from paper-like digital to structured, shareable data.

These themes echo ICC’s Next-Generation Trade Corridors report, which estimates $10 trillion+ in efficiency gains once legal, digital and data infrastructures align across hubs like the UK, India and Singapore.

How do we convert words into action, to make trade cheaper, faster, and simpler? In this panel, TTP heard a level overview of the delivery on the Roadmap to Digitalise UK Trade, Plan for Growth and Trade and Corporate Digitalisation Taskforces as well as developments at B20, ASEAN, APAC, World Trade Organization, ICC Digital Standards Initiative and Commonwealth Trade Ministers Meeting.

Panelists included:

• Chris Southworth, Secretary General, ICC United Kingdom – Moderator
• Ayesha Ali, Deputy Director, Digital Trade and Telecoms, UK Department for Business and Trade
• Oswald Kuyler, Senior Digital Trade Advisor, Asian Development Bank
• Opeyemi Abebe, Head of Trade Competitiveness program, Commonwealth Secretariat
  Brett Hillis, Partners, Reed Smith

Three workstreams were highlighted:

1) Data creation layer: Instead of asking 160 million businesses to change behaviour, focus is on the 140 technology firms whose systems generate trade records, updating “Save as / Export” functions to natively produce shareable, standardised digital documents. Target horizon: 2030.
2) Business identity: Trade depends on identity and documents, yet fewer than 10 million firms globally have digital IDs. MDBs are pushing for interoperable identity solutions, so governments can modernise business registries. Major announcements expected by end-2025.
3) Trust frameworks: With 29+ competing trust models globally, the goal is to define a universal trust mechanism ensuring documents are authentic, unaltered, and compliant.

• Chris Southworth, Secretary General, ICC United Kingdom – Moderator
• Andrew Skene, Director, Skene Scotch Whisky Ltd
• Susan Ashworth, Senior Trade Finance Specialist, Matalan

Chair of ICC United Kingdom, Lord Karan Bilimoria, presents opening remarks. Trade Treasury Payments are delighted to be media partners at the conference, reporting on the latest updates.

It’s a full house here at the ICC United Kingdom’s conference, Action, not words, held at Reed Smith in London. Secretary General Chris Southworth opens the conference.