An export order between an Indian manufacturer and a buyer in the US sets several processes moving at once. The exporter approaches a financier against the receivable; a freight forwarder issues the shipping documents; the buyer’s bank handles the payment instruction; and compliance teams on both sides run their own checks. Each stakeholder has a role in completing the transaction, but they all work from their own system and set of records. This results in a trade transaction that is economically connected but operationally fragmented.

 

Five hurdles recur across this lifecycle.

 

1. Country-level Payment Systems

A B2B payment has to be matched to the invoice and the shipment it relates to before either party can treat the transaction as settled. Policy work has concentrated on improving the speed and cost of the payment rail itself. The G20 launched its cross-border payments roadmap in 2020 and set most targets for the end of 2027. However, the Financial Stability Board’s 2025 progress report found that while the speed of wholesale payments and remittances has improved globally, completed policy work has not yet produced tangible gains for end users. The FSB considers it unlikely that the 2027 targets will be met.

2. Document-heavy Trade

A single cross-border transaction can involve dozens of documents and multiple copies. Each document is issued by a different party and may have to be reconciled by banks, customs authorities and other participants before a transaction can proceed with confidence.

Every handover requires information to be re-entered or checked. If there is a mismatch in a consignee’s name, shipment details, or invoice information, it can delay customs release or payment. Not only that, the correction has to travel back through the parties that have already handled the document. Physical copies add another constraint, as documents have to be couriered between parties and jurisdictions.

3. Repetitive Counterparty Identity Verification

The ICC Digital Standards Initiative has mapped the key documents used in cross-border trade and found that a substantial share of the data elements across them is simply information about the parties involved. These data elements do not automatically pass on a recognized identity from one system to another. For example, a bank verifies an exporter against its own records and framework, while a customs authority or logistics provider verifies the same company separately, most likely by using different identifiers, databases, and data formats. Hence, the same company has to be identified and verified repeatedly, increasing onboarding time and creating more risk of inconsistent or outdated information.

4. The Huge Trade Finance Gap

The ADB’s 2025 Global Trade Finance Gap Survey estimates the global trade finance gap at USD 2.5 trillion, the same as it was in 2023 and equivalent to about 10% of global trade.

One of the principal causes of this gap is lenders’ need for reliable information about the underlying transaction before they can finance it. When it comes to smaller exporters, that information may be spread across invoices, purchase orders, shipping records, tax documents, bank statements, and other systems. Thus, a financier has to spend time interpreting these documents to assess the risk. The cost of that interpretation does not scale down with ticket size, which is why small transactions are often declined on economics rather than on credit.

5. Different Customs and Logistics Procedures

Customs procedures and transport links are unique to every country, resulting in every border adding a separate set of steps to the transaction. Clearance timing, inspection requirements, and documentation vary by market. Each variation influences when goods are released, when documents can be verified, and when a payment can be completed. A delay in customs can affect delivery, impacting payment as well as receivable financing. A receivable whose payment date cannot be predicted with confidence is harder to finance and prices worse.

These hurdles reinforce one another, which is why improving one part of the system does not necessarily remove the friction elsewhere.

 

Initiatives to Connect the System

Several initiatives are beginning to address this fragmentation at different levels.

• The Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) shows what a common standard can achieve for identity. A bank onboarding an overseas buyer can then check its LEI against a free, open index containing more than 3 million active records.
• India’s draft Digital Trade Facilitation Bill, 2026, now out for consultation by the DGFT, would give electronic trade documents the same legal standing as paper and treat control of a document through a reliable method as equivalent to possession. It follows comparable laws in Singapore and the UK. The open questions are interoperability between platforms and how a reliable method is certified, but the legal foundation for an electronic bill of lading moving between parties in hours rather than days is being laid.
• India has also built much of the underlying data layer: GST e-invoicing, customs filings through ICEGATE and consent-based data sharing through the Account Aggregator framework. Taken together, these make a far larger share of a transaction verifiable at source than was possible even five years ago.
• The Reserve Bank of India joined Project Nexus in 2024, an initiative to connect UPI with the fast payment systems of four ASEAN countries for retail transactions.
• The G20 roadmap on cross-border payments sets shared targets for improving international payments.
• India’s BRICS Chairship in 2026 produced a Logistics Supply-Chain Cooperation Framework, aimed at improving cooperation across fragmented supply chains and transport links between member countries.

 

Connecting the Financing Layer

Infrastructure for documents and identity addresses how a transaction is evidenced. It does not by itself bring capital to it. Within India, GIFT IFSC has been built as the route for that: IFSCA’s regulated International Trade Finance Services (ITFS) framework allows an exporter to present a single transaction to several financiers at once, each assessing it against its own risk appetite, rather than approaching them one at a time. Recent measures point the same way, including a capital relief framework for factoring exposures backed by eligible credit protection, and the operationalization of the Government’s export factoring subvention for MSMEs within the IFSC.

The distance still to travel is considerable. Factoring in India is estimated at roughly 1% of GDP, against 20% or more in several developed markets. The instruments are not new and the frameworks increasingly exist; what has been missing is the connective tissue between an Indian receivable and the capital willing to fund it.

 

Connecting the Trade Lifecycle

Vayana’s vision is a connected trade infrastructure that allows information created at one stage of a transaction to remain usable at the next, without requiring the exporter, financier, bank, customs authority, or logistics provider to recreate the same record. Vayana TradeXchange, operating as a regulated ITFS platform from GIFT IFSC, brings these participants into a common marketplace so that an exporter does not have to approach each financier separately. They can all see the same transaction and each can assess it against its own risk policy and appetite.

There will continue to be complexity in cross-border trade with the involvement of different banks, financiers, customs authorities, logistics providers and regulatory systems. While it is not possible to eliminate it, steps need to be taken to ensure that the information connecting them does not get lost at every handoff. Only that can turn a collection of digital systems into financial infrastructure for trade.