Developer Portal
Your needs
  • Cargo owners
  • Freight forwarders
  • Ocean carriers
  • Banks
  • Ports
  • Terminals
  • Solution providers
  • Insurers
Explore
  • Our mission
  • Your needs
  • Standards
  • Developers
  • Newsroom
  • Get involved
  • About us
Connect
  • YouTube

Sign up for our newsletter

Privacy policyCookie policyWhistleblower systemResponsible disclosure policy
© DCSA 2025all rights reserved.
To complete an international shipment, several documents must be exchanged between multiple parties.
Currently, these documents are not standardised, and the majority are still paper based, requiring physical hand-off between participants. The manual handover of paper documents is inefficient, expensive and error prone, which contributes to high costs and supply chain bottlenecks.  Despite these issues, adoption of the electronic bill of lading (eBL) is currently extremely limited. In 2021, DCSA estimated that 16 million original B/Ls were issued by ocean carriers and that paper B/Ls cost the industry around US$11 billion per year. Despite this, at the end of 2021, only 1.2 per cent of B/Ls was electronic.¹

Benefits of digitalising documentation

The bill of lading has changed little since the 1700s, but undoubtedly the world has Creating a standardised, digital native version of the B/L and all associated documentation, and standardising B/L processes will drive benefits not only for the industry and its stakeholders, but for the world at large.  A dramatically simplified and streamlined B/L process will enable carriers to become more efficient while providing a better experience for shippers. And every stakeholder will benefit from increased efficiency, accuracy and reduced administration costs. 

The DCSA Digital Trade initiative

The need for digital documentation is widely accepted among industry stakeholders and momentum driving universal eBL is building within industry and government. In support of this effort, DCSA’s Digital Trade initiative will mitigate the challenges involved in standardising and digitising international trade documents. The ultimate goal is to facilitate acceptance and adoption of an eBL by regulators, banks and insurers, and to unify communication between these organisations and customers, carriers and all other stakeholders involved in an international shipping transaction.Download our e-book to read more about streamlining international trade by digitalising end-to-end documentation.
Download the e-book

Digitalise the container shipping industry

At DCSA, we envisage a digitally interconnected container shipping industry in which customers have a choice of seamless, easy-to-use services that provide the flexibility to meet their business and sustainability goals.

Read more

Join us in shaping the future of container shipping

Get involved

Join us in shaping the future of container shipping

Get involved
EBook

Streamlining international trade by digitalising end-to-end documentation

3 Min read | January 30, 2023

Latest resources

Announcement

DCSA welcomes Lufthansa Industry Solutions and Vinturas as first partners of its DCSA+ partnership programme at TPM25

Article

2024: the year of adoption, collaboration and smart containers - what TPM taught us

The future of container shipping: A podcast with Kshitij Parashar, DCSA’s Program Lead for Cargo Visibility

Video

Supply Chain Visibility Solutions: Mastering Challenges & boosting Container Shipping Success

Article

Bill of Lading (B/L) vs Sea Waybill

Article

Just-in-Time explainer video

Video