TradeCard, a specialist in managing the financial end of trade transactions, yesterday expanded its service portfolio to include online customs declaration by signing a deal with Tradelink.
The New York-based firm said the deal with Tradelink, the government's minority-owned portal for the electronic transmission of regulatory documents, could save Hong Kong traders 'millions of man-hours' by reducing data input.
'International trade is highly complex business. Each shipment generates at least 40 documents or copies and can go through as many as 60 distinct processes,' said TradeCard chief executive Kurt Cavano.
TradeCard uses the purchase orders and invoices from its core business of electronically managing trade's financial supply chain to minimise duplicate manual data entry.
'The customs declaration integration adds another important piece to that,' Mr Cavano said.
He said Hong Kong generated about 1.4 million customs declarations a month, most of which were handled by Tradelink, which had a monopoly on electronic transmissions to customs.
