The electronic bill of lading: Challenges of paperless trade

Abstract

The bill of lading (B/L) is the most important document for sea freight transport. It proves that goods were taken over in the described form by a carrier. Moreover, it secures the obligation to deliver the goods to the place of destination and to deliver them to the consignee. In addition, the transfer of ownership of the good named in the B/L can be replaced by the transmission of the B/L. To this day, the B/L is still a paper-based document. Various attempts to digitalize the B/L failed due to heterogenous reasons. Especially approaches using a central intermediary have not been accepted by the market. This paper presents the domain-specific and legal context as well as a conceptual approach to digitalize the B/L. In this paper, domain-specific challenges for the digitalization of the B/L are described as well as a conceptual approach to overcome such challenges.