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For years, trade finance and cross-border payments have looked ripe for disruption by distributed-ledger technologies. Asia provides some firm examples of breakthroughs, but – in the second of a two-part series – Euromoney asks whether trade finance will always be just that little bit too complicated for the blockchain?
It is now roughly a year since most of us first heard of Covid-19. One year on, Asia is taking stock of the impact on cross-border trade, while the region’s bankers and corporates are digesting what they have learned along the way.
There are several lessons that are useful around the world: that resilience is just as important as efficiency; and that scraping every last dollar of savings is not as important as making sure you can continue to operate under stress. Turning digital is not only useful but vital, and a thorough supply-chain financing programme is essential if you want your suppliers to survive a shock like this intact.
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