Trade finance

Run your letters of credit and bank guarantees on Multigate. Instruments your banks send you over SWIFT arrive automatically; instruments you apply for are sent to your bank when an approver signs them off. Your team reviews, completes and approves every record with a maker-checker workflow, keeps the documents with it, and sees all of it in one dashboard.

What you can do

Around them:

• Documents: attach invoices, bills of lading and other files to letters of credit and guarantees.
• Manual records: record instruments handled outside SWIFT, so everything is in one place.
• Dashboard, alerts and reports: your open exposure in one currency, upcoming expiries and pending approvals; email reminders before expiry and payment dates; CSV reports on demand or by email.

Key terms

• Letter of credit (LC): a bank's promise to pay a seller once the seller presents the documents the LC asks for (for example an invoice and a bill of lading). It protects both sides of a trade: the seller is paid by a bank, and the buyer only pays against the right documents.
• Guarantee (bank guarantee, demand guarantee): a bank's promise to pay a beneficiary if the applicant doesn't perform, for example doesn't deliver or doesn't pay. The beneficiary claims (invokes) it to be paid.
• SWIFT messages banks use for these: MT700 issues an LC, MT707 amends it, MT760 issues a guarantee, MT767 amends it.
• Instrument: Multigate's working record of one LC or guarantee: the bank's terms plus the fields your team adds (internal reference, internal approvals, payments, notes).
• Advise: accept an export LC or inward guarantee into your records, after checking it. The bank has already issued it; advising doesn't send anything to the bank.
• Amendment: a change to the terms, agreed through the banks over SWIFT (MT707 for LCs, MT767 for guarantees).
• Update request and instrument update: a change to Multigate's record only (for example your internal reference, payment dates or notes). Never sent to a bank.
• Maker and checker: a maker prepares a record or change; a checker (approver) approves or declines it. See Who can do what.

Before you start

• The Trade Finance module. Your business must subscribe to it; ask Multigate to switch it on. Until then, the trade finance permissions can't be added to a role.
• An API user with trade finance permissions. Ask an administrator of your business to give your API user a role with the permissions below, in the dashboard. Use separate API users for makers and approvers if your policy needs two people for every step.
• MG_BASE_URL and MG_API_KEY, set as in the Quickstart. Trade finance uses the same API key (mp-api-key header) as every other endpoint; every path starts with /trade-finance-service/api/v1.
• Test instruments in the sandbox. Export LCs and inward guarantees only appear when a bank's SWIFT message arrives. Ask Multigate how to get test ones in the sandbox, or create test records with a manual upload.

Who can do what

Each endpoint accepts any one of the permissions it lists. The usual set-up is three roles: viewer (view), maker (view and manage) and approver (view and approve). Give everyone view, so they can also use the dashboard.

How a record moves

Every instrument has a status (where it is in its life, for example pending, advised, issued, amended) and an approval status (pending, approved, rejected, or empty), which tells you whether something is waiting for an approver. A record waiting for an approver has approvalStatus: pending, whatever its status.

The full lifecycles are in Status lifecycles. In short:

Export LCs and inward guarantees (sent to you by a bank):

flowchart TD
    R1([SWIFT message arrives]) --> R2[pending]
    R2 -->|maker completes,<br/>approver advises| R3[advised]
    R2 -->|approver declines| R4[rejected]
    R3 -->|bank amends| R5[amended]
    R5 -->|you respond,<br/>approver approves| R6[accepted_amendment or refused_amendment]

Import LCs and outward guarantees (applied for by you):

flowchart TD
    A1[draft] -->|maker submits| A2[pending]
    A2 -->|approver approves:<br/>sent to the bank| A3[applied]
    A2 -->|approver declines| A4[rejected]
    A3 -->|bank issues| A5[issued]
    A5 -->|amendment accepted<br/>by bank, then beneficiary| A6[amended<br/>then accepted_amendment or refused_amendment]

Working with the API

Trade finance follows the platform's conventions, with a few differences worth knowing before you write code.

• Responses: every success is HTTP 200, also when something is created. The body is { "message": ..., ...fields }: what the endpoint returns sits next to message (often in data, sometimes in document, documents or another key; each operation shows its shape).
• IDs are whole numbers sent as strings (for example "10045"). Send them back exactly as received. The ID each endpoint expects in its path is named in its description: export LCs use lcId, import LCs use id.
• Dates in requests are DD/MM/YYYY (for example 05/11/2026); ISO dates are refused. Dates come back in different formats depending on the endpoint.

• Amounts are in major units (250000.00 is 250,000.00). Detail endpoints return them as decimal strings, most lists as numbers. Read both.
• Lists are paginated with pageNumber (from 1) and pageSize (up to 100), and return totalItems, currentPage, pageSize and totalPages next to data (the export LC list nests all of them inside data). See Pagination.
• Unknown fields in a request are removed, not refused. A misspelt field is ignored silently, so check the response.
• Errors come in three shapes: a validation error (400, every failing field listed), a business rule error (an array with one message, for example when the record isn't in the right status), and 401/403 with the message unauthorized or forbidden. Validation runs before the permission check. See Errors.
• No idempotency keys. Repeating a create, save or submit creates a second record. After a timeout, list the records before you retry.

Notifications

Trade finance sends emails, not webhooks. To follow records from your system, poll the lists (sort by last update) and read the details that changed.

Emails go to every user of your business who holds the permission the step needs, for example "Import LC Approval Request" to approvers when an application is submitted, and "Import LC Approved" to makers when it's approved. Links in emails open the dashboard. The full list is in Email notifications.

Next steps

• Letters of credit: export and import LCs, amendments and documents.
• Guarantees: inward and outward guarantees, claims, extensions and expiry.
• Dashboard, alerts and reports.