IOTA Expands TWIN Initiative With Focus on Customs, Taxes, and Trade Digitization

• IOTA’s TWIN Foundation conducted a pilot in Kenya, in collaboration with government agencies, to improve tax collection, reduce errors, and increase supply chain transparency.
• Powered by IOTA’s Tangle, TWIN offers cost reductions of up to 80%, faster data sharing, and enhanced inclusion.

The IOTA Foundation is expanding its TWIN initiative in digitizing the supply chain in different countries, while offering a powerful decentralized infrastructure at the same time. IOTA founder Dominik Schiener highlighted the potential of TWIN, while providing a technical overview of the platform. Besides, he also explained how it can be used to digitize national supply chains.

Powered by IOTA, TWIN is a scalable infrastructure designed to enable decentralized digital trade across industries and regions. The platform helps small businesses in low- and middle-income countries access trade digitization, overcome operational barriers, and maintain compliance and sustainability.

TWIN Foundation Reports Positive Feedback From Kenya Pilot

The TWIN Foundation has been testing its TIP platform in Kenya in collaboration with government agencies, including the Kenya Revenue Authority. According to the foundation, the pilot has received strong feedback, with officials noting improvements in tax collection, reduced misclassifications and misdeclarations, and greater transparency and visibility across the supply chain.

The Foundation highlighted time savings as a key benefit. Drawing parallels to a previous pilot with the UK government, TWIN noted that border agencies were able to access crucial trade data weeks before goods arrived, streamlining customs and trade processes.

Furthermore, Shciener’s team noted that the use cases they are building in partnership with UK will go live in the fourth quarter. The network’s Rebased ledger has been fully integrated, replacing previous Stardust versions, and all open-source connectors currently provided are based on Rebased. Other ledger connectors may be offered by third parties, as the architecture remains open.

IOTA’s TWIN architecture aims to transform global trade with features such as Self-Sovereign Identity, Dataspaces, and Digital Product Passports, and multiple projects are already leveraging its capabilities. As per the whitepaper from IOTA, TWI presents a comprehensive framework aimed at transforming international trade. With global trade exceeding $33 trillion in goods and services annually, the initiative could have a significant impact on the industry.

Leveraging the Tangle Framework

The TWIN Foundation offers significant advantages for trade participants, including potential cost reductions of up to 80%. Besides, it also caters to faster data sharing in hours rather than days, and enhanced transparency and inclusion, particularly for SMEs and emerging markets. These improvements are powered by IOTA’s distributed ledger technology, the Tangle, as reported by CNF.

TWIN leverages this technology through a modular, API-driven framework, allowing developers, governments, and businesses to integrate various tools or services as needed without rebuilding the entire system.