IN Brief:
- The FIT Alliance reports 51.1% of its 2026 respondents use electronic bills of lading at least partly.
- Exclusive eBL use reached 11.2%, while only 22.2% of responding banks reported at least partial use.
- The findings are based on 190 cleaned survey records and are not a measure of all global shipments.
The FIT Alliance reports that 51.1% of respondents to its 2026 survey use electronic bills of lading (eBLs), either exclusively or alongside paper documents, up from 49.2% in 2024 and 33% in 2022. Exclusive electronic use is substantially less common, at 11.2%, while transferring documents between different technology platforms has emerged as a leading obstacle to broader adoption.
The survey was published on 21 October by the alliance established by ICC, BIMCO, DCSA, FIATA and Swift. Its researchers analysed 190 cleaned responses gathered through the participating organisations’ member networks, with compilation by Shanghai Maritime University and interpretive analysis involving the Digital Supply Chain Institute. These percentages describe the people and organisations responding, not the share of all international cargo shipments or the global population of trading companies using eBLs.
Bills of lading commonly serve as receipts for goods accepted by a carrier and evidence of the terms under which cargo is carried; some also perform the function of a document of title. Replacing a physical original therefore requires more than scanning a signed piece of paper. Depending on the document and applicable law, the electronic system must establish which party controls the authoritative record, when that control changes hands and whether presentation or surrender has been completed.
A transaction can involve a carrier, shipper, freight forwarder, consignee, insurer and financing bank, none of which is guaranteed to use the same software provider. An electronic record that stays inside a single platform may be easy to manage there but difficult to transfer to another party while preserving authenticity and an unambiguous chain of control. Interoperability needs to address that transition without producing two competing documents that each appear to be the valid original.
Respondents most frequently cited interoperability and fragmentation between platforms when asked about the remaining barriers. Legal effectiveness, authenticity verification and the effort involved in onboarding further participants were also important. Unlike earlier surveys, the 2026 questionnaire recorded obstacles through open-ended comments rather than a fixed menu of answers. That methodological change prevents a direct comparison of percentages for individual barriers with previous years.
The share of respondents using eBLs exclusively rose from 7.5% in 2024 to 11.2% in 2026, leaving approximately 40 percentage points of respondents reporting some use alongside paper on the published headline definitions. Mixed processes mean counterparties may still have to manage both physical document delivery and an electronic record, often because one participant in a transaction cannot accept or receive the digital form. Adoption of an eBL platform alone does not guarantee that a shipment can be released using paperless documentation throughout.
Banking respondents remain behind the wider sample: 22.2% reported at least partial eBL use, compared with 21.1% in 2024. Documentary trade finance can depend on a bank establishing the document’s authenticity, ownership or control before releasing funds or accepting a presentation. The alliance argues that banks need confidence in those properties across provider boundaries, not simply within one vendor’s system. The survey does not establish the behaviour of every trade finance bank or show that all jurisdictions apply the same rules.
Respondents nevertheless associated electronic documentation with wider trade digitalisation. Some 93.8% regarded eBLs as an enabler of that process, compared with 94% in the previous survey, while faster processing remained the leading perceived benefit. Electronic delivery can remove courier stages and reduce some transcription and handling work, but time saved on documents does not necessarily translate into identical reductions in overall cargo dwell time.
Customs controls, payment arrangements, terminal charges and carrier release requirements still determine when goods can leave a port. A trustworthy digital document may reach a consignee earlier than a physical original, yet a container can remain held for an inspection or an unresolved data discrepancy. Broader adoption therefore depends on linking legally recognised electronic control with the existing commercial and operational processes used to authorise cargo release, rather than simply accelerating transmission of an image or PDF.
Because the response pool was drawn from alliance networks, the study should not be treated as a census of worldwide trade. Its authors did not publish the same regional breakdowns and those by company size used in earlier rounds and intend to review the survey instrument before the 2028 edition. The results establish growing eBL participation among respondents alongside a significant gap in exclusive use and banking adoption. Whether that translates into wider paperless cargo movements will depend on portable records and effective transfers between carriers, customers, banks and technology providers.
