To Grow, Global Trade Needs Standardized Digital Organizational Identity
Jason Yu, CEO of TradeGo, explains how the LEI and vLEI will help global trade achieve its growth potential by enabling a truly interoperable digital trading environment.
Author: Jason Yu, CEO, TradeGo
Date: 2025-12-16
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According to a recent report from ICC UK, the digitalization of global trade could help to increase global growth by $9 trillion across the G7, $1 trillion across the Commonwealth, and $1 trillion across ASEAN, while also addressing a $2.7 trillion trade finance gap that disproportionately impacts small businesses and developing economies. Yet despite significant investment in digitalizing global supply chains, only 1-2% of trade documents are currently handled digitally.
The LEI/vLEI digital organizational identity solution is the ‘interoperability key’ the world needs to unlock this remarkable growth potential.
What are the challenges inhibiting global trade?
The problems inhibiting global trade are similar to those in other digital ecosystems, with fragmented data standards and systems that result in suffocating complexity. Electronic Bill of Lading (eBL) platforms are a prime example. Their reliance on manual verification and developer-led integration contributes significantly to the costly, onerous, duplicative, and oftentimes ineffective Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) processes, hampering today’s global trade environment.
The vLEI addresses this challenge by providing a globally interoperable, standardized identifier for organizations, streamlining verification and onboarding, reducing costs, minimizing human error, and enabling faster, more trusted trade worldwide.
The vLEI addresses this challenge by providing a globally interoperable, standardized identifier for organizations, streamlining verification and onboarding, reducing costs, minimizing human error, and enabling faster, more trusted trade worldwide.
Is TradeGo already realizing benefits from the vLEI?
Users of the TradeGo platform span industry players across bulk commodities, shipping, and finance. By embedding vLEI credentials across our blockchain-based solutions - which include eBL, e-contracts, digital payments, and electronic bunkering - we are helping to simplify cross-border commodity trading, shipping, and payments.
Our integration of vLEI credentials builds on our platform’s existing digitalization capabilities and is already delivering significant operational benefits. Data from pilot and pre-qualification scenarios shows that our solutions can cut digital payment compliance costs by up to 90 percent, reduce manual operations by 80 percent, and increase trade document processing efficiency by over 60 percent.
This illustrates the transformative potential of combining blockchain-based trade solutions with globally verifiable digital identities as we begin full-scale issuance of vLEI credentials.
What are the key opportunities?
We see significant opportunities as the digitalization of trade and payments converges amid growing regulatory momentum for stablecoins. In fact, supporting highly efficient, low-cost global trade transactions is quickly emerging as a key use case for widespread stablecoin adoption beyond crypto-asset trading. It is expected to account for a significant share of international trade payments by 2030.
Recently, Australian meat and agricultural products exporter JOC Australia Pty Ltd (“JOC”) completed the world’s first compliant stablecoin-based cross-border payment and financing transaction in international trade on the TradeGo platform. This achievement demonstrates the feasibility of using stablecoins in real-world trade scenarios and sets a new benchmark for the digital transformation of global commerce.
Importantly, by enabling real-time, automated compliance, the vLEI addresses some of the current challenges posed by stablecoin settlement, such as the need to manually verify anonymous wallet addresses, which leads to transaction delays and a high risk of underreporting.
What barriers need to be overcome?
Ongoing collaboration with financial institutions and customs authorities is key to strengthening the importance of the LEI and vLEI across KYC, AML, and sanctions screening. The good news is that the inclusion of the LEI in FATF’s updated Recommendation 16 on Payment Transparency offers a compelling precedent outlining the role of universal organizational identifiers in streamlining verification.
More broadly, there is a need for increased standardization across emerging frameworks promoting trade digitalization.
How do you see the ecosystem developing in the future?
Looking ahead, achieving QVI status forms part of TradeGo's broader ambition to create a trusted global digital trade environment that links identity, business, and data, known as GIFTS (Global Inter-entity Financial and Trading Society). By embedding vLEI credentials across our platform, we are laying the foundation for truly interoperable global trade, where a single identity supports participation across ecosystems.
The benefits stand to extend far beyond trade. Since the earliest days of humanity, the ability to verify an individual's identity has served as the cornerstone of society. Now, amid the global wave of digitalization, verifying the identities of both individuals and enterprises will be the "ticket" that enables entry into the new digital era.
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Jason Yu is the founder and CEO of TradeGo, a blockchain-based platform for cross-border commodity trading. Under Jason's leadership, TradeGo has achieved multiple milestones – including becoming the 10th eBL service globally to be certified by the P&I Club, the fifth to secure a marine fuel supply license from the Singapore Maritime and Port Authority, and the sixth Qualified vLEI issuer (QVI) worldwide to be approved by GLEIF.
Jason brings over 15 years of industry experience to the role. He began his career at Sinochem in 2008 and, over the course of a decade, advanced to become Head of Risk Control – developing deep expertise in trade operations and risk management. In 2017, Jason founded Sinochem Energy Tech to lead the integration of digital solutions across the energy supply chain.
Jason holds a BSc in Automation from Tianjin University and an MBA from Tsinghua University.
