Freight and Funds
Cross-border payment · one batchbatch EU-4471 · loaded
Freight and Funds · Rotterdam

A payment goes down eight steps, and something is taken at each one.

  1. The orderterms decided here
    Step 1The order fixes when you get paid, who carries the risk and which papers a bank will accept. 11 published Incoterms rules decide the risk alone.ICC, Incoterms 2020
  2. The inspectiona signature becomes evidence
    Step 2Somebody looks at the cargo before it leaves and signs. An inspection dated after the shipment is not evidence, and a bank will say so.Examined under UCP 600
  3. The production runpaid for before the buyer pays
    Step 3Materials are bought months before the money arrives. Unmet demand for trade finance runs at $2.5tn.Asian Development Bank, 2025
  4. The measurementdocuments, not goods
    Step 4A bank pays against paper. 3 documents have to agree before it will: invoice, packing list, bill of lading.Documents named in the credit
  5. The handoverthe exact metre
    Step 5Loading is where the cargo stops being yours. The rule without its named place is half a term, and the place is the metre where risk passes.ICC, Incoterms 2020
  6. The paperworkone digit stops it
    Step 6Three authors describe one shipment in three vocabularies. 1 mismatched digit is enough for a refusal.Refused under UCP 600, article 16
  7. The paymenttwo clocks, not one
    Step 7The instruction leaves. 90% reach the receiving bank inside an hour and only 43% reach the customer’s account.Swift, October 2024
  8. The reconciliationwhat actually landed
    Step 8The amount credited is smaller than the amount sent. 6.36% is the average corridor cost, taken along the way.World Bank, Q3 2025
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The route

Eight stages between an order and money in the account.

Every stage has an owner, a document and a cost. Below is the whole chain in one view: the same one the scene above walks through.

Costs shown are published averages, linked in each stage. Where a stage carries no price, what it costs is time.

Speed

The payment is fast until it stops being your bank's problem.

Swift publishes how quickly payments cross its network. The headline number is genuinely good. The number underneath it is the one that decides whether your supplier ships on Monday.

Source: Swift, published 17 October 2024, and the Financial Stability Board annual report on the G20 targets. Read 3 September 2026.

Cost

What a corridor charges, and what the channel changes.

The World Bank prices 367 corridors every quarter. Pick how the money travels and watch the same transfer change price.

6.36%global average, all channels
Bar shows cost against the worst channel measured Global average has stayed under 7% since 2019

Source: World Bank, Remittance Prices Worldwide, Q3 2025 issue published September 2025. The index prices transfers equivalent to 200 US dollars across 367 corridors. Read 3 September 2026.

Access

Two and a half trillion dollars of trade that nobody financed.

The gap is not a shortage of money. It is a shortage of applications a bank will approve, and it falls hardest on the smallest exporters. Four in ten applications from small and medium firms are refused, which is now almost exactly the rate for large corporates, and that convergence is the good news buried in the survey.

Source: Asian Development Bank, Global Trade Finance Gap Survey 2025. Read 3 September 2026.

Plain words

Nine terms that move real money.

Each one appears in a document you have already signed or are about to. Open a term to see what it does to you.

Schedule

What publishes next.