XDC Network announced that it is focusing on building on-chain trade finance infrastructure by transitioning related documents and payment processes to blockchain to resolve inefficiencies in the global trade finance market. The company explained that the current trade finance market relies on paper documents and numerous intermediaries, leading to transaction settlements taking several days or more, and structural problems such as short-term financing rates for SMEs reaching up to 30% annually. XDC claims that by tokenizing trade-related assets like invoices and bills of lading (B/L) to enable on-chain verification of transaction history and collateral status, it can reduce fraud risk and lower financing costs to as low as 10% annually. Furthermore, given that trade finance is a market worth approximately $15 trillion, it is expected to become a key growth driver in the blockchain-based real-world asset (RWA) sector. The current volume of on-chain trade finance is reportedly around $700 million. XDC acquired Contour Network, a trade finance platform involving over 100 financial institutions including HSBC, Citi, and Standard Chartered last year, and plans to expand its business by integrating stablecoin payment infrastructure in the future.
