Interim relief as procedural containment in letter-of-credit law

Letters of credit remain central to trade finance because they provide a bank-issued payment undertaking insulated from ordinary disputes in the underlying transaction. Yet many credits are issued within domestic credit relationships in which the issuing bank assumes contingent exposure and the applicant may become indebted upon honour. This article argues that, in such credit-backed structures, the central legal problem is not fully captured by the traditional autonomy-and-exceptions framework. Acute stress arises at the point of honour, where immediate payment may both complete the outward documentary undertaking and crystallise funded exposure and reimbursement liability before the merits of the wider dispute are resolved. In this setting, interim judicial relief is best understood not as a broad substantive exception to autonomy, but as a mechanism of procedural containment. This reframing clarifies the relationship among documentary autonomy, bank credit exposure, timing, and adjudicative control in letter-of-credit disputes.