Trade finance revenue is quietly shifting away from letters of credit and traditional instruments toward open account and supply chain finance. Yet many banks are still running that growing business through a platform that was designed, or patched together, for an entirely different product mix.
Quick Answer
There is no universal best option. The right supply chain finance software depends on the programs a bank actually runs: reverse factoring, dynamic discounting, receivables finance, distributor finance, purchase order finance, or deep-tier structures. Strong solutions distinguish themselves through program flexibility, supplier onboarding speed, ERP integration depth, multi-funder capability, and compliance controls embedded in the workflow. Industry survey data shows that compliance has overtaken technology investment as trade banks’ leading concern, changing what a credible platform evaluation must cover.
Why the Platform Question Is Getting More Urgent
The 2025 CGI and BAFT trade finance survey, now in its fifth year, found that traditional trade instruments are expected to fall from about 50% of trade revenue today to 39% within five years. Open account and supply chain finance are expected to grow from roughly 26% to more than 32% over the same period.
That may look like a minor shift, but it changes the capabilities a bank needs from its technology. Growth is occurring in open-account and supply chain finance products, which can place very different demands on onboarding, data integration, programme configuration, and transaction monitoring than traditional documentary trade systems were designed to support.
What “Best” Actually Means for an SCF Platform
Supply chain finance isn’t one product. A platform that’s excellent at reverse factoring for large anchor buyers can be a poor fit for a bank whose growth is in dynamic discounting or receivables finance for mid-market suppliers.
Before comparing vendors, it’s worth being specific about which of the following a bank actually needs to run. The right platform depends entirely on the answer:
- Reverse factoring, where a bank pays approved supplier invoices early, funded against the buyer’s credit.
- Dynamic discounting, where a buyer uses its own cash to pay suppliers early in exchange for a discount, sometimes bank-facilitated.
- Receivables finance, where a bank purchases or advances against a supplier’s receivables directly.
- Deep-tier structures, which extend an anchor buyer’s credit strength to smaller suppliers several tiers down the chain, not just direct, tier-one suppliers.
- Distributor finance, which funds a distributor’s purchases or stock, often anchored to the credit of the manufacturer they’re buying from.
- Purchase order finance, which funds a supplier’s production costs before goods ship, based on a confirmed purchase order rather than an invoice.
Core Capabilities to Evaluate
| Capability | What to Look For |
| Program type support | Does it handle multiple programs (reverse factoring, dynamic discounting, receivables finance, etc.) or just one program? |
| Supplier onboarding | How fast can a new supplier be added, and does the platform support multi-language, self-service onboarding? |
| ERP and procurement integration | Does it connect cleanly to common ERP and procurement platforms already in use by anchor buyers? |
| Multi-funder capability | Can more than one bank or funding source participate in the same program? |
| Deep-tier reach | Can the platform extend financing to suppliers beyond tier one using the anchor buyer’s credit? |
| Compliance and KYC tooling | Is compliance monitoring built into onboarding and transaction flows, or handled as a separate process? |
| Analytics and reporting | Can the bank and the buyer see program performance, supplier participation, and funding utilization in real time? |
Compliance Has Become a Platform Requirement, Not an Add-On
The same CGI and BAFT survey found that 53% of trade finance respondents now cite compliance as their greatest concern, ahead of technology investment itself, a sharp rise from the year before. Sanctions screening, transshipment controls, and disclosure requirements now vary across jurisdictions in ways that are genuinely hard to keep up with manually.
If a platform treats compliance as something checked after a transaction rather than built into the onboarding and approval flow, a program will slow down exactly where speed matters most: getting new suppliers live. Evaluating compliance tooling deserves the same weight as evaluating program-type flexibility.
Fintech Partnerships vs. Building In-House
Very few banks are building supply chain finance platforms entirely from scratch anymore. The same survey found that banks are actively partnering with supply chain finance providers (41%), digital document platforms (39%), and multi-bank networks (38%).
Satisfaction with fintech engagement stood at 64%, down slightly from the previous year. Even so, nearly three-quarters of respondents expected to expand fintech partnerships in the near term. Building in-house may give a bank greater control, but it also transfers responsibility for ongoing maintenance, integrations, security, and regulatory change to internal teams. The decision should therefore compare long-term operating capability and total cost—not assume that either partnership or in-house development is automatically superior.
A Practical Evaluation Checklist
Before shortlisting vendors, it’s worth pushing on a few specifics:
- Which program types does the platform support today, and which are on a roadmap rather than live?
- How long does supplier onboarding actually take in a reference client’s program, not in a demo environment?
- What does compliance monitoring look like inside the platform, and is it built in or a separate integration?
- Can the platform extend financing to tier-two and tier-three suppliers, or is deep-tier support a future promise?
- How many funding sources can participate in a single program, and how is that structured?
The Bottom Line
There is no universal best supply chain finance solution. There is a best fit for the programmes a bank runs today, the markets it serves, and the products it plans to grow. With open-account and SCF revenue expected to expand while compliance has become the industry’s leading concern, banks should shortlist solutions that demonstrate configurable programme design, integrated controls, interoperability, and credible reference deployments—not simply the longest feature list.
Evaluate how Uncia Flow supports configurable SCF programmes, supplier onboarding, integrations, multi-funder structures and governed expansion across markets.
