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This is a test deployment and is not authoritative. The published site is at unvtd.unece.org.Under developmentThe UNVTD project is in development phase and is not yet ready for production implementation. The final approved and implementable standard is expected to be released before the end of December 2026.
Use CasesOverview

Use Cases

Every international trade runs on a chain of documents — a purchase order, a commercial invoice, a bill of lading, a customs declaration, a payment. Today most are paper or PDF, carrying little assurance of who issued them or whether they have been altered.

The use cases in this section describe how each stage of a trade works when those documents are verifiable, following the trade lifecycle — order, finance, ship, clear, settle:

  • Buy-Sell — the commercial flow between buyer and seller: purchase order, commercial invoice, packing list.
  • Trade Finance — letters of credit, documentary collections, and supply chain finance, where verifiable documents reduce due diligence costs and broaden access for SMEs.
  • Transport & Logistics — moving the goods across carriers, forwarders, and ports, including transferable records such as the electronic bill of lading.
  • Border Compliance — customs clearance and regulatory compliance, where verifiable documents streamline declarations, reduce fraud, and enable risk-based processing.
  • Payment & Reconciliation — settling the trade and matching the verifiable invoice to payment, where domestic tax compliance is realised.

Each scenario is multi-stakeholder and country-agnostic. The Implementation Model explains how the underlying decentralised approach works and why it scales.

To see the value each stakeholder captures across these flows — quantified as benefits against implementation cost — see the Business Cases.

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