Credit Electronic Single Supplementary Provisions (eucp) Legal Issues

Letter of credit, due to its independence in nature, is an excellent financial tool to meet the requirements of the traders and bankers in different countries. The era of paperless credit seems inevitable as the coming of the modern computerized processing of data and instantaneous telecommunication became predominant in commerce and the combination of the interests of the applicant and beneficiary in a mutual desire to process the documents presented promptly. To meet the requirements of the traders and bankers, ICC released the Supplement to the Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credits for Electronic Presentation (eUCP) on April 1, 2002. eUCP contains 12 articles, mainly addressing presentation and examination of electronic documents under letter of credit.Chapter I discusses the possibility and inevitability of the release of the eUCP. Chapter II makes a brief introduction in respect of the general provisions of the eUCP, which lays a foundation for a further introduction for the operational practice of the electronic letter of credit. Chapter III is the major body of this thesis, which is divided into three parts: Section (i) sets out all the documents and electronic information under eUCP; Section (ii) illustrates the electronic presentation under eUCP; Section (iii) elaborates the examination of the electronic documents under eUCP. Chapter IV focuses on the banking and court practice of PRC in conjunction with some advice given by the author.This thesis introduces the most updated ICC rule with a view to helping PRC banks and enterprises to have a good awareness of the applicable international rule, which benefits them when applying the rule. This is exactly the intention of the author to write down this thesis. Therefore, this thesis focuses on the operational practice of the eUCP by banks with a hope that Chinese banks and enterprises will take advantage of this rule in the near future.