Australia and Singapore conclude digital verification blockchain pilot

The Australian Border Force (ABF), Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA) and Singapore Customs, along with other industry representations, have concluded a blockchain trial project analyzing the status of the countries’ digital verification systems in issuing and verifying trade documents. The collaborative venture was a part of the Australia–Singapore Digital Economy Agreement — an initiative designed to increase the efficiency of trade between the two countries, as well as to minimize economic friction in cross-border payments. The interoperability of the two digital verification systems — the ABF’s Intergovernmental Ledger and IMDA’s TradeTrust reference implementation — was analyzed to understand the possibility of creating “high integrity digital trade documents that can be instantly authenticated, provenance traced, and digitally processed.”