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Why URDTT matters now

26/11/2025 For some time after its launch, the ICC Uniform Rules for Digital Trade Transactions (URDTT) sat quietly in the background of trade finance, noticed by specialists, referenced in conferences, but rarely implemented in practice. Many saw it as an interesting but premature attempt to govern a world that did not yet exist. Others viewed it as an abstract document without a clear instrument or operational anchor. The prevailing assumption was that the market would continue to rely on UCP, eUCP and existing practice, leaving URDTT to drift into irrelevance.
But the story did not end in 2021. In many ways, it is only beginning now. URDTT was designed at the intersection of two tectonic shifts, the decline of document-centric workflows, and the rise of data-driven trade ecosystems. Yet when it emerged, the industry lacked widespread MLETR adoption, interoperable digital identities, eBL usage at scale, tokenised payment instruments, mature DLT networks, structured data models for trade, and AI systems capable of reliable validation.
URDTT was an outline of the future, but the world was still operating in the present. Fast forward to 2025-2030, and the evolution is unmistakable. The UK's ETDA and Singapore's ETA reforms have given legal certainty to electronic transferable records; the FIT Alliance has created a pathway to mass adoption of eBLs; ISO 20022 has embedded structured data into the financial system; tokenised deposits and stablecoin pilots by major banks have brought programmable settlement into mainstream finance; AI-based compliance tools have moved rapidly from experimentation to operational deployment; platforms are beginning to interoperate rather than compete in silos.
In this environment, URDTT no longer looks ahead of its time. It looks exactly of its time. Contrary to common perception, URDTT is not competing with UCP or eUCP. It is filling a vacuum they cannot fill. UCP and eUCP govern a world where trust is rooted in documents, physical or electronic, whose evidential value flows from their representational character.
URDTT proposes something different: trust derived from data, from the integrity and verifiability of digital assertions rather than from the authenticity of documents. What makes URDTT essential is that it recognises a reality the industry has only recently embraced, that in a digital-native trade environment, documents are not the only way to prove fulfilment of conditions. Data, verifiable, structured, cryptographically signed, can do the same job, often more precisely. What URDTT lacks is not ambition but definition. For URDTT to succeed, the market needs a clear, enforceable instrument, the Digital Payment Commitment (DPC).
A DPC is irrevocable, identifiable, represented as a digital asset, governed under MLETR principles, conditional on data events, transferable under control-based logic, and enforceable under a recognised legal framework. This is the digital equivalent of a documentary credit, only it is governed by verifiable data events rather than documents.
If URDTT remains static, platforms, regulators and networks will fill the void with proprietary standards, fragmented rulebooks and private networks. That would push the ICC from the centre of trade governance to the margins, at the very moment the industry is seeking coherence and interoperability.
But if URDTT is re-engineered now, aligned with MLETR, ISO 20022, the ICC's DSI architecture, and the needs of banks and corporates, it can become the unifying rulebook for data-first trade, as well as the standard for digital payment commitments and the anchor for programmable settlement.
The world is ready for URDTT in a way it was not when the rulebook was first released. What remains is for the ICC to refine the model, clarify the instrument, and anchor digital-native trade in a rule framework worthy of its complexity. URDTT's moment is no longer hypothetical. It is here. And the industry cannot afford to let it pass.

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