Global Shipping Business Network (GSBN), a neutral, not-for-profit consortium enabling paperless, accessible and sustainable growth in global trade with its data infrastructure and ecosystem of partners, has officially joined the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s (HKMA) Project Ensemble to test its electronic Bill of Lading (eBL) tokenisation use case with Ant Digital Technologies and conduct interbank atomic settlement of tokenised deposits between the Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and Hang Seng Bank (Hang Seng).

Project Ensemble is a new wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (wCBDC) initiative established by the HKMA to encourage use cases from all sectors to build innovative financial market infrastructure (FMI) that enables the settlement of tokenised money and real-world assets (RWA) via a wCBDC.

Under Project Ensemble, eBLs are issued over GSBN’s blockchain infrastructure which also facilitates trade finance activities between corporates and financial institutions. These eBLs are tokenised by Ant Digital Technologies and wrapped on their own blockchain to enable trade finance payments to flow through via tokenised deposit and wCBDC.

The tokenisation of the eBL, a critical document underpinning global trade and serving as a means of legally transferring the title of goods, will for the first time pave way to the securitisation of global physical shipping flows. This can unlock alternative sources of finance and address the US$2.5 trillion global trade finance gap. The market for tokenised RWAs such as eBLs is estimated to reach $30.1 trillion by 2034, highlighting the huge opportunities ahead.

Bertrand Chen, CEO of GSBN, said, “Joining Project Ensemble is another milestone in our mission to modernise trade for a more resilient global economy by accelerating the tokenisation of eBL. Working with ecosystem partners like Ant Digital Technologies and banks in Hong Kong creates new trade finance opportunities for businesses and trade intermediaries all over the world. This latest development highlights the rapid growth of the GSBN network and the potential for tokenisation to pave the way to a digitally driven global trade ecosystem.”

GSBN is forging an ecosystem of partners with global shipping lines including COSCO Shipping Lines, OOCL, Hapag-Lloyd, and banks to issue eBLs over GSBN’s platform to offer greater efficiency, visibility and potential financing opportunities to the customer. To date, over 14,000 customers have been onboarded globally and more than 300,000 eBLs have been successfully issued and transferred on GSBN.

Chenguang Zhang, CEO of ZAN, a technology brand of Ant Digital Technologies, said, “Working with GSBN and Project Ensemble is a huge opportunity to unleash the full potential of tokenisation in addressing the global trade finance gap. We hope to realise the full impact of tokenisation in shipping by leveraging our development expertise to extend eBLs issued on the GSBN network and tokenise them on the DT Real-World-Asset blockchain network, and connect them with commercial banks for payment and financing. Our partnership with GSBN began last year with the collective ambition to move at speed to leverage web3 technologies to enable a transparent, efficient and future-proof solution for global trade.”

Tokenised eBLs issued over GSBN’s platform will be a real-world asset use case under the trade and supply chain finance theme under Project Ensemble.