XDC Network announced that it is focusing on building an 'on-chain trade finance infrastructure' that converts related documents and payment processes to the blockchain in order to resolve inefficiencies in the global trade finance market.

The company explained that the current trade finance market has structural problems, such as relying on paper documents and multiple intermediaries, which take several days or more for transaction settlement, and the short-term financing interest rate for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) reaching 30% per annum. Accordingly, XDC claimed that by tokenizing trade-related assets such as invoices and bills of lading (B/L) to verify transaction history and collateral status on-chain, it can reduce fraud risk and lower financing costs by up to 10% per annum.

Furthermore, it projected that the trade finance market, valued at approximately $15 trillion, will become a key growth driver for the blockchain-based Real World Assets (RWA) sector. The current scale of on-chain trade finance is known to be around $700 million.

Meanwhile, XDC acquired the trade finance platform Contour Network, which involved the participation of about 100 financial institutions including HSBC, Citi, and Standard Chartered last year, and plans to expand its business by integrating stablecoin payment infrastructure in the future.