Limits of the Doctrine of Strict Compliance with Particular Emphasis on “Bank Payment Obligation” (BPO)

In order to deal with existing problems in relation to documentary credit and electronic documentary credit, International of Chamber of Commerce (ICC), in cooperation with Swift and ISO, strived to adopt a new payment system, called: Bank Payment Obligation (BPO). The main part of the BPO relates to data presented electronically to the bank by the seller. The role of the bank is to transfer the data to Trade Matching Application (TMA) in order to comply with the terms of BPO and to clear the payment. The purpose of the BPO is to minimize the risks associated with traditional documentary credit system, and to reduce the time and cost for examining data and proceeding with the payment. By conducting a comparative assessment, this article aims to illustrate problems pertaining to documentary credit problems by examining the limitations of the documentary credit system, and to discuss whether the BPO could address these problems. Although it remains to be seen whether the BPO could be regarded as an appropriate system, it would seem that the BPO may not meet the needs of international trade.