The thinking behind the $2.5 trillion trade finance gap and its future in a war-torn world

Stablecoins can make trade finance faster, cheaper, and more transparent, improving access to liquidity for SMEs. Tokenisation can democratise investment in real-world assets by allowing investors to purchase fractional ownership of assets with significantly lower minimum investments. Despite their benefits, digital assets carry operational and regulatory risks, making thorough due diligence essential.

International debt collection requires an understanding of local laws, cultural norms and repayment practices to maintain trust and secure payments across borders.

A financing shortfall is choking trade. Funding is disproportionately allocated to richer nations and large corporations with more developed export credit infrastructure and strong credit histories.    Against this backdrop, multilateral development banks (MDBs) can bridge finance gaps through capital provision, regional involvement, and coalition building, which lower investment risks for private capital. MDBs step in where traditional finance fails.    In the latest episode of Trade Finance Talks, Doğa Usanmaz, Reporter at Trade Finance Global (TFG), spoke with Steven Beck, Head of Trade and Supply Chain Finance at the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Beck, one of the architects of ADB’s annual gap study, discussed the inception of the ‘trade finance gap’, the role of digitalisation, and the ongoing impact of war in the Middle East.    According to Beck, as the war in the Middle East surges and key commodity prices continue to soar, another gap in trade finance is emerging. 

Latin America's (LatAm) abundant critical mineral reserves, including the largest lithium reserves on the planet, have elevated the strategic importance of regional trade, with the resources to tackle and manage global challenges, from an energy transition to an artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. For the third episode of Trade Finance Global (TFG) and BAFT’s podcast series, ‘Banking on the present’, Mahika Ravi Shankar, Deputy Editor at TFG, sat down with Daniel Pinho, Chief Operating Officer at BAFT and liaison for the BAFT Americas and Regional Bank Councils.

North American trade tensions challenge regional commerce as US-Canada trade tensions reshape payments, resilience and banking across the region.

Yesterday, 25 August, Canada announced tariffs on $27.6 billion worth of imports from the US. This came in retaliation for the new 50% tariffs being imposed on $27.6 billion of Canadian goods - in what Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne describes as a “dollar-for-dollar, rate-for-rate” strategy.

When US-Israeli airstrikes killed Iran’s supreme leader in February 2026, sparking an Iranian retaliation on US allies in the Middle East, many assumed this would be yet another flash in the pan in the increasingly volatile region.  Six months on, conflict endures, proving more resilient and disruptive than anyone had bargained for, rerouting shipping routes and heightening concerns about the security of the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint in oil transport. With global attention for conflict gravitating towards the Middle East, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is being considered in global commodity flows less and less. Nonetheless, recent Ukrainian attacks on Russian ports in the Black Sea, just a few thousand miles away, significantly exacerbate the global energy crisis.

African markets are among the fastest-growing for receivables finance, but the solution remains virtually unknown in many parts of the continent.  Yet as a financing model, receivables finance, also known as factoring,  lets businesses unlock cash tied up in unpaid invoices instead of waiting 30, 60, or even 90 days for payments. Through receivables finance, the supplier sells outstanding invoices to a third party - a factor - and the factor advances the majority of the invoice value, with financing linked to the underlying receivables and the creditworthiness of the debtor. The cash provided by the factor can then fund payroll, inventory, and essentially keep the wheels rolling before the buyer has completed payment.

Any conference, interview, or conversation on the future of trade will inevitably discuss the inefficiencies which need to be addressed before that future arrives.  Although artificial intelligence (AI) is, by now, ubiquitous, a redefinition of value, risk, and information transmission can be solved by tokenisation. But what do digital assets actually offer in the current context of global trade? And how ready is the present regulatory and cultural climate? For the final episode of Trade Finance Global (TFG) and Standard Chartered’s five-episode podcast series, Future of Trade, TFG’s Mark Abrams was joined by Standard Chartered’s Kevin Chang, Head of Trade and Working Capital for Hong Kong and GCNA  and Group Head of Trade Digital Assets, and Emily Chan, Director, Trade Product Manager, Digital Assets, to discuss the future of digital assets in trade.