The FIT Alliance today announced the results of its 2026 global survey tracking adoption of electronic Bills of Lading (eBL). The survey confirms the continued upward trajectory of eBL adoption first established in 2022 and 2024 and identifies interoperability as the defining challenge of the next phase.

The FIT Alliance was co-founded by ICC, BIMCO, DCSA, FIATA and Swift. The survey was conducted in partnership with Shanghai Maritime University and the Digital Supply Chain Institute (DSCI), the survey finds that the majority of respondents now use eBLs in some capacity and identifies interoperability as the defining challenge of the next phase of adoption.

Key findings:

• eBL adoption reached 51.1 percent, up from 49.2 percent in 2024 and 33.0 percent in 2022.
• Exclusive eBL use rose to 11.2 percent, up from 7.5 percent in 2024.
• 93.8 percent of respondents view eBLs as an enabler of broader digital transformation in trade, broadly unchanged from 94.0% in 2024.
• Interoperability and platform fragmentation emerged as the most-cited concern, signalling a shift towards operational execution at scale.
• Banking adoption remains limited, with 22.2 percent reporting at least partial eBL use, broadly unchanged from 21.1 percent in 2024.

Continued momentum in eBL adoption

Overall adoption, encompassing users of eBLs exclusively or alongside paper bills of lading, has risen to 51.1 percent of respondents, up from 33.0 percent in 2022 and 49.2 percent in 2024.

Beneath the headline figure, the composition is maturing. The share of respondents using eBLs exclusively has risen to 11.2 percent in 2026, up from an implied 5.0 percent in 2022 and 7.5 percent in 2024.

eBLs remain a catalyst for digital transformation

The business case for eBLs continues to command near-universal recognition. In 2026, 93.8 percent of respondents view the eBL as an enabler of broader digital transformation in trade, holding at the 94.0 percent level recorded in 2024 and well above the 86.0 percent recorded in 2022. Respondents rank faster processing as the leading benefit, followed by improved handling, data accuracy, enhanced security, cost savings through process efficiencies, and the elimination of courier costs – an ordering consistent with the 2024 findings. Environmental benefits, reduced paper use and lower transport emissions, are rated important by approximately two-thirds of respondents.

From legal reform to operational execution

The 2026 round captured respondents’ concerns through open-ended comments rather than the fixed options used in prior rounds. Interoperability and platform fragmentation emerged as the single most-cited concern, followed by legal effectiveness and authenticity verification, and implementation and onboarding at scale. The pattern is consistent with the maturation of the legal landscape – the share of respondents flagging legal acceptance as a significant obstacle fell from 55.0 percent in 2022 to 42.6 percent in 2024, and with the shifting of the industry’s attention from “can an eBL be legally issued” to “can it be relied upon as it moves across systems”.

The banking adoption gap persists

The banking sector provides the clearest indication that structural challenges remain . In 2026, 22.2 percent of bank respondents report at least partial eBL use, essentially unchanged from the 21.1 percent recorded in 2024, despite a strong awareness level of 82.5 percent in that round. The adoption-awareness gap flagged two years ago has not closed. Banks require legal, technical, and network-level assurance that control, status, and transfer of an eBL can be verified as it moves across the ecosystem, rather than merely within a single platform: pointing again to interoperability as the operative constraint on scaled adoption.

A call to action: interoperability as the next phase

The 2026 findings point to one strategic priority for the next cycle: interoperability.

The survey confirms that interoperability is now a central concern for scaling eBL adoption. The industry has made important progress, but the next phase must enable electronic trade documents and trusted data to move securely and efficiently across different platforms, jurisdictions and participants. This is not about imposing one solution on the market. It is about respecting the diversity of users and technical approaches while agreeing on the common standards and frameworks that allow different solutions to work together.

The model that has underpinned eBL adoption to date, in which the eBL exists as a record on a specific solution provider’s system, and movement between platforms depends on bilateral or multilateral interoperability arrangements: faces scale constraints. For eBLs to move seamlessly across the global trade corridor, the eBL itself must become portable: a structured, standards-based data object that travels between systems, jurisdictions, and participants without being bound to the platform on which it was issued. Further sector-wide progress, particularly in banking and trade finance, where interoperability friction is most consequential, depends on this transition. The FIT Alliance and its partners are committed to advancing this collective effort and turning interoperability into a practical reality for global trade.

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