• THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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• v.58
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• pp.237-263
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• 2013

Traditionally, a L/C (letter of credit) has been known as a relatively low risk method of payment. This is why L/C has been used in international trade. However, L/C has a number of weak points such as high cost, long processing time, and complicated documents. Using an electronic L/C is one way to solve those weak points. In Korea, there are two types of electronic L/C. One is the EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) based L/C and the other one is the XML (Extensible Markup Language) based L/C. The former, established in 1990's, is sent from banks to the beneficiary solely through VAN (Value Added Network, KTNET) operators. On the other hand the latter, started in 2005, is sent from banks to KFTC (Korea Financial Telecommunications & Clearings Institute) for management of the L/C balance, as well as to KTNET. So far, paper L/C and EDI based L/C have been used overwhelmingly instead of XML based L/C in spite of the aforesaid disadvantages. In this paper, the authors examined empirically why the users of electronic L/C were reluctant to use XML based L/C. The results are as follows. First, the users of paper L/C were more dissatisfied than the users of electronic L/C due to many factors such as cost, the time required, and information reuse. Second, the users who have more experience with XML based L/C wanted to adopt integrated management with EDI based L/C more than the users who had not experienced XML based L/C. Third, the users who had used more than one form of L/C wanted to adopt integrated management to EDI and XML based L/C more than the users who had only used one form of L/C. Therefore, the authority for electronic L/C should consider a change of the policy from the XML based electronic L/C oriented to integrated management of the various types of L/C.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.429-455
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• 2013

This paper investigates the extent and scope of electronization of Letter of Credit and examines the obstacles in the course of electronization of Letter of Credit. For this purpose, this paper adopts two track methodologies. First, we study the electronization of Letter of Credit in the macro perspective. It means that we analyze the scope and the extent of electronization of electronic Letter of Credit in the national economy as a whole. Second, we utilize the case study approach to examine the electronization of Letter of Credit in micro perspective. In other words we examine individual commercial banks in Korea. For this purpose, we analyze the data from two commercial banks out of four largest domestic banks in Korea. For example, we select two commercial banks in Korea and ask current status of electronization of Letter of Credit, i.e, the utilization of EDI L/C, e-L/C, and e-B/L. A major finding of our study is that the extent of electronization is not negligible in micro perspective as well as in macro perspective. In micro perspective, two commercial banks utilize EDI letter of credit in a critical sense. On the other hand, they seldom uses e-L/C and e-B/L in international transaction. This study shows that major bottlenecks for the electronization of Letter of Credit are pessimistic perception of SME entrepreneurs toward the electronization of Letter of Credit and the high costs of system building. We conclude that unlike superficial perception, there is a considerable progress toward the electronization of Letter of Credit in micro perspective.