Digital Trust in Action: Global Best Practices for Paperless Trade Infrastructure
As digital trade accelerates, the ability to exchange data and documents seamlessly across borders increasingly depends on the strength of the underlying digital trust infrastructure. Achieving paperless trade requires confidence that diverse systems, actors, and jurisdictions can recognize and rely on each other’s data, credentials, and compliance processes. This session examines how emerging tools and governance models are reshaping digital trust in practice, moving beyond conceptual frameworks to operational examples that demonstrate what trusted, borderless digital interactions look like in real supply chain environments.
Drawing on global and regional experiences, the session will explore best practices for adopting interoperability frameworks that enable mutual recognition of identities, authorizations, and digital attestations across borders. It will highlight real-world cases that show how trust frameworks function in day-to-day trade operations, including how government agencies, logistics providers, financial institutions, and digital platform operators implement secure mechanisms for cross-border validation. Key trends—such as verifiable credentials in supply chains, privacy enhancing technologies, zero knowledge proof applications in customs and trade finance—will be included in the discussion to illustrate how emerging technologies strengthen reliability while safeguarding confidentiality.
By showcasing these best practices, the session aims to enhance understanding of how a robust digital trust infrastructure enables scalable and secure paperless trade. It will address the core challenges of cross-border data exchange and identify strategic opportunities for public-private collaboration. Ultimately, the session seeks to identify opportunities for accelerating interoperable ecosystems in the Asia-Pacific region, ensuring that digital trust becomes a foundational catalyst.
This event is part of the APTFF x PTW 2026, co-organized by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), in collaboration with the Asia PKI Consortium.
Tentative Programme
for more information, please contact
Trade, Investment and Innovation Division +66 2 288-1234 [email protected]