Saudi Customs have announced it integrated its electronic data interchange (EDI) system FASAH with IBM and Maersk’s TradeLens blockchain platform. FASAH aims to enable data exchange between the Saudi Customs department and importers and exporters. Last August, TradeLens, the platform for digitizing the global supply chain went live. Like many blockchain projects initially, the platform had limited early access. However, it became commercially available in early December.
Saudi Customs envisages TradeLens helping to address multiple challenges. Firstly, the existing technology lacks scalability, completeness and maturity according to the Saudi Customs press release. Secondly, there’s the business challenge of getting ecosystem participants and competitors to cooperate. And a side effect of this is a lack of data interoperability.
Ledgerinsights.com describes how, as an early adopter, Saudi Customs wants to educate and experiment and potentially look at preparing to migrate to blockchain. However, it stated it was currently “testing” the use of blockchain.
