Transitioning from Paper to Electronic Trade Documents: The Need for Reliable Physical Assurance

The transition from paper-based to electronic trade documents (eTDs) represents a critical step in modernising global supply chains; however, the absence of reliable mechanisms to verify the physical movement of goods vis-à-vis the eTD workflow remains a significant challenge. This study proposes the PROGRESS framework, an integrated digital trade architecture that combines AI-driven document verification with real-time physical tracking to ensure end-to-end assurance of consignments. The approach leverages advanced optical character recognition (OCR) techniques, including transformer-based attention models, convolutional recurrent neural networks (CRNNs) with connectionist temporal classification (CTC), and vision transformers (ViTs), enhanced through context-aware validation to ensure semantic consistency across key trade documents, such as commercial invoices, packing lists, air waybills, and certificates of origin. A pilot scenario modelling ~5100 consignments was evaluated and benchmarked against real-world operations for the UK customs report and Teesside International Airport report. Results indicate that the proposed system reduces per-transaction document processing time from 19 min in traditional paper-based systems to approximately 1.8 min, achieving a document verification accuracy of 98.61% (F1 = 98.38%) across a 503-document evaluation corpus, with a demonstrated processing time of 1.78 min per transaction—projecting a theoretical throughput of 33.6 transactions per hour under sustained operation. Furthermore, integration with RFID-based tracking, geofencing, and private 5G connectivity enables continuous monitoring of consignments, increasing the platform throughput from 3.2 to 33.6 consignments per hour. The findings demonstrate that combining digital documentation with verifiable physical assurance significantly enhances transparency, efficiency, and regulatory compliance. This research contributes to the advancement of digital trade by addressing key limitations in current eTD implementations and supporting the effective adoption of the United Kingdom’s Electronic Trade Document Act.