Exploring blockchain technology in international trade: Business process re-engineering for letter of credit

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the applicability of blockchain technology in international trade process from a perspective of letter of credit payment.

Design/methodology/approach

A blockchain-based re-engineering process is designed by employing the blockchain and its affiliated smart contract technology to harvest the benefits of distributed ledger and distributed business workflow automation.

Findings

Comparative analysis and feasibility study were conducted to identify and validate the prospects, in terms of facilitating process flow and enhancing overall trade performance, of the proposed blockchain-based international trade process model.

Practical implications

Traditional trade processes suffer from a great number of issues about intermediaries, information latency and trust, which, in turn, hinder overall process efficiency. The emerging blockchain technology may have potentials to mitigate those issues by revolutionizing business processes across enterprise borders in various industries.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the conceptual design of a blockchain- and smart-contract-based process along with a provision of practical case in business process re-engineering. Further endeavors devoted to blockchain research and application across different sectors are suggested to reach better performance of business process operations.

Citation

Chang, S.E., Chen, Y.-C. and Wu, T.-C. (2019), "Exploring blockchain technology in international trade: Business process re-engineering for letter of credit", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 119 No. 8, pp. 1712-1733. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-12-2018-0568