Digital Payments and Paperless Trade: UNCITRAL is Building Legal Infrastructure for Trust and Interoperability

From 19 to 22 January 2026, UNCITRAL held a Colloquium on digital payments and paperless trade in Vienna. The ICLRC participated as an observer in Working Group IV, and the ICLRC’s expert Nikolay Dmitrik delivered a presentation.

As UNCITRAL Secretary Anna Joubin-Bret stated in her opening speech, these two issues—digital payments and paperless trade—complement each other perfectly. Global trade and payments are interlinked components of global value chains. However, UNCITRAL’s work on each topic is at different stages. The work on digital payments is in the exploratory stage, with the main aim of discovering and discussing possible market needs and challenges. The paperless trade topic is already in the preparatory stage. During its fifty-eighth session, the Commission asked the Secretariat to prepare materials that could serve as a basis for a consolidated text on end-to-end digital trade, based on existing model laws and guiding documents. At this stage, the goal of the work is to identify possible solutions that may later be assigned as tasks to working groups.

Digital payments-related issues

The experts discussed several topics related to digital payments, including the coherence or fragmentation of legal frameworks at the national and international levels. They mentioned that the correct term may be “legal infrastructure,” as the rules are as important as the technical and organizational elements of international payment systems. Legal interoperability is necessary to increase legal certainty and ensure mutual trust among market participants, just as technical and organizational interoperability are. The experts devoted considerable time to discussing the various national and regional laws and initiatives that comprise legal infrastructures for digital payments. They also discussed the legal nature of different payment services.

Another topic that was discussed was the cross-border recognition of data and documents during digital payments. It was noted that this issue falls outside the scope of identification laws, including the UNCITRAL Model Law on Identity and Trust Services (MLIT). Nevertheless, identity fragmentation is an important issue. Matters beyond the traditional scope include anti-fraud efforts, combating financial crime, sanctions compliance, and countering terrorism and money laundering. Several platforms for global identification and the issuance of identifiers were discussed within this context.

Some experts noted that the ultimate goals of the legal infrastructure for cross-border digital payments are to reduce risk and lower transaction costs. These aims should be seen as win-win goals: achieving one does not diminish the other. From this point of view, UNCITRAL’s role may not only be a platform for collaboration and cross-border engagement, but it may also establish interoperability based on mutually recognized standards and security through mutual trust.

Paperless trade-related issues

The discussions on the topics of digital trade were intended to support the Commission’s work on the draft guidance document or model legislation on paperless trade. The following topics were discussed:

- experiences and challenges in establishing an enabling legal framework for paperless trade

- cross-border recognition of electronic documents, data, and identity management based on UNCITRAL texts

- specific challenges arising from exchanging trade and trade-related documents and data with public entities

- regional perspectives on digital platforms and ecosystems for submitting trade documents

- private sector practices and needs

Experts emphasized that technology is an enabler, but legislation itself should adhere to technological neutrality and not presuppose any technological solutions. However, existing solutions can serve as a starting point for discussion. The legal infrastructure should be like LEGO blocks, offering sufficient reuse and scalability and containing modular building blocks that can be mixed and matched. It was also mentioned that discussions on digital trade rules should be multistakeholder at all stages.

Discussion on regional best practices

Several regional best practices were discussed. The ASEAN Single Window (ASW) and the ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA) established a network of national single windows among ASEAN member states (G2G) that share a common technical design. These systems facilitate the exchange of trade administration documents using a common data format, and they operate under the agreement and its related protocols. Another regional example is the Commonwealth Model Law on Digital Trade. The model law provides a comprehensive legal framework that removes legal barriers to digital trade and aligns national laws with four UNCITRAL model laws. This will enable Commonwealth nations to be more agile and resilient by making trade cheaper, faster, simpler, and more secure. The eIDAS II and business wallet infrastructure were also discussed as possible sources of inspiration for UNCITRAL’s work in cross-border digital trade.

Nikolay Dmitrik’s presentation on practice in Eurasia

During his panel presentation, Nikolay Dmitrik, the ICLRC expert, presented the challenges that arise during the digital transformation of trade in Eurasia. All Eurasian countries are transit countries, both in terms of cargo and in terms of the transit of laws. Interoperability and compatibility are not just words here; they are the core principles that fuel the entire Eurasian economy. A 2025 ICLRC survey showed that nearly all countries had implemented approaches to recognizing foreign signatures and trust services that differed from those in the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Signatures (MLES). However, three game-changing laws have recently been adopted. The first was China’s Data Security Law, which introduced new requirements for all types of data interchange. The second and third were the Kyrgyz and Kazakh digital codes. Both were adopted in the second half of last year and will take effect in the coming months.

The transition from paper documents to electronic documents, and then to records, is a key process in digitizing trade. Each step along this path represents a significant transformation in interaction architecture. However, backward compatibility is also important. This results in a “technology zoo,” or multiple-speed interchange. While this can be costly and inefficient, it is still necessary for many market players, particularly local small and medium-sized merchants.

Open and closed ecosystems and architectures are not mutually exclusive. In fact, all inherited PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) architectures are closed. While they may be efficient at the national level, they have proven nearly impossible to scale. Conversely, open architectures lead to a lack of trust and are unmanageable due to the “technology zoo” effect. As a result, almost all countries opted for a compromise, combining open and closed architectures.

Attempts to establish paperless international trade in the Eurasian region over more than 15 years have shown that a fully open, laissez-faire approach to recognizing foreign signatures and trust services is not effective. Even countries that adhered to this approach had to combine it with ex ante recognition methods. At least two promising legal instruments for seamless digital trade can be found here: trusted service lists and trusted third parties, which work with both ex ante and ex post recognition. These instruments are in the early stages of deployment, and we must monitor them.

Finally, there is strong momentum for a comprehensive legal framework. This framework should address formal issues, such as signature recognition, as well as substantive matters. Currently, national requirements for digital record formats and data-exchange interface content are not compatible, so work is needed to align them. Undoubtedly, forums like this colloquium greatly help promote digital trade regulation.

What’s next

The results of the colloquium will be presented to the Commission at its 59th session, scheduled to take place from June 22 to July 10 in New York this year.