[국제무역결제]국제거래에서 화환신용장의 대체적 결제수단으로서의 보증신용장의 활용

Application of Standby Credits as Alternative Payment System for Documentary Credits in International Transactions

Documentary credits have been used as one of the most useful payment methods in international trade since 1970s in Korea But since the financial crisis m 1997, there's a significant change in the trend of using payment methods by Korean firms. That is while the volumes of transactions on remittance basis are increasing, but the volumes of transactions on documentary credits basis are decreasing. The decrease of using documentary credits is due to various reasons but it is obvious that the demerits of documentary credits such as the inefficiency in documentation and expensive banking commissions are the main reasons of that change. As the main function of documentary credits is substituting the buyer's credit to bank's credit, the seller who does transactions not using documentary credits would run the risk of non-payment by the buyer. In order to remove such risk the the authors suggest the application of standby credits in international transactions. Standby credits fulfill same function of substituting the buyer's credit to bank's credit as documentary credits have, and at the same time standby credits are more convenient for use and cost less than documentary credits. So standby credits would be suitable for alternative payment system for documentary credits in international transactions.