The Digital Renaissance of Trade Finance: How SECRO is Redefining Global Commodity Trading

Crédit Agricole CIB and ING adopt SECRO’s workflow platform to digitalize commodity trade finance, replacing documents of title with tokenized originals

SECRO, the document workflow automation platform founded in the US in 2021, established itself in Switzerland since July 2025 as a rapidly emerging leader for the digitalization of inventory and trade finance.
Its technology has been successfully used so far in more than 48 countries to digitize $3.5BN worth of shipments. 6 out of the top 10 largest commodity traders use Secro, alongside more than 300 importers, exporters and logistic service providers.
SECRO network expansion is now backed by the momentum of Europe tier-1 bank’s adoption.

A Landmark Shift in Commodity Operations
In October 2025, Crédit Agricole CIB went live with SECRO’s proprietary blockchain technology initiating production use to digitalize its transactional commodity operations. This partnership bore fruit early this year with the successful execution of the bank’s first-ever digital commercial operation in the energy sector, involving a major global trader and financed by the bank.

The digital document of title was issued by the vessel master while already at sea, transferred in seconds to the shipper, with Crédit Agricole CIB receiving it in its SECRO digital vault. This enabled the bank to hold secure control over the only original issued, throughout the entire duration of the voyage, digitally endorsing the document to the final consignee and then transferring it only upon final settlement.
This first transaction has already paved the way for a steady flow of upcoming shipments, signaling that adoption of digital negotiable instruments at scale is a tangible operational reality also in the highly sophisticated Swiss commodity trading industry.

The Network Effect: ING Joins the Ecosystem
The industry’s confidence in SECRO was further solidified as ING adopted the platform in the first months of 2026 following Crédit Agricole CIB earlier start. ING is a heavyweight in the commodity finance sector, with strong track record of being at the forefront of digitization. ING is already working on expanding the use of tokenization technology across its vast portfolio of clients to optimize trade finance operations. Further than that, the Dutch bank’s Swiss branch is exploring the applicability of the Secro Core platform technology to inventory financing. Once validated and delivered, this capability would make ING the first bank in the world able to tokenized documents of title across the end-to-end commodity finance value chain, from pre-shipment to in-transit and post-shipment.
With ING’s digital trading operations expected to commence shortly with multiple launch customers lined up , and multiple other banks under onboarding, the network effect is in full swing.

By onboarding multiple systemic financial institutions, SECRO solved the primary hurdle of digital trade: end-to-end connectivity and interoperability between all the stakeholders of the value chain, from exporters, to logistic service providers, traders and finally banks.

“This initiative reflects our ambition to position Crédit Agricole CIB among the early movers shaping the future of Trade Finance” says Vincent Gancel, Deputy Global Head of Global Trade & Commodities, Crédit Agricole CIB, who continues “by going live with SECRO and executing our first electronic bills of lading (eBLs), we are demonstrating that digital negotiable instruments can already operate securely and efficiently in real commodity flows.”

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Jean-Marc Thijs, Chief Operational Officer, ING Wholesale Banking in Switzerland adds that “ING has long been at the forefront of digital progress in trade and commodity finance for many years. In today’s environment of rapid transformation and increasingly complex risk landscapes, digitalisation has become the new normal. Thus, we are pleased to enter into the partnership with SECRO, which allows us to further expand our digital offering and deliver an innovative solution that brings greater efficiency, transparency and resilience to our clients.”

Why SECRO? Global compliance, Swiss reliability
SECRO’s choice of Switzerland as its European headquarters in July 2025 was a strategic, deliberate choice. Switzerland’s DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) Act provides one of the world’s most robust legal frameworks, giving digital ledger-based securities the same legal standing as traditional paper documents.

Secro’s technology infrastructure sits in the Zurich region, providing unparalleled data protection standards and a FINMA-compliant stack. SECRO technology ensures full compliance with also other prominent digital trade frameworks such as the UK ETDA, the Singapore ETA as well as any other MLETR-compliant law such as the US NY, French and Dutch ones. SECRO negotiable instruments can be governed at the choice of the customer by any of these laws, with certainty of legal recognition anywhere in the world.

Key, demonstrated advantages of the SECRO solution include:
• Reduced transactional risk: Only one tokenized original with real-time tracking of ownership and unambiguous legal rights assignment
• Increased legal robustness: No lost documents, no delayed paperwork bogging down operations. A secure, irrepudiable and accurate audit trial of every transaction, with a chain of trust of identified parties on record, readily available in case of need.
• Increased operational velocity: Transfers of title that used to take days via international courier now happen in seconds.
• Liquidity: Instant verification of titles allows banks to release financing faster, optimizing cash flow for traders.

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