letter of credit

Image 1: After a contract is concluded between a buyer and a seller, the buyer's bank supplies a letter of credit to the seller. Image 2: The seller consigns the goods to a carrier in exchange for a bill of lading. Image 3: The seller provides the bill of lading to the bank in exchange for payment. The seller's bank then provides the bill to buyer's bank, who provides the bill to buyer for presentation. Image 4: The buyer provides the bill of lading to the carrier and takes delivery of the goods.

A letter of credit (LC), also known as a documentary credit or bankers commercial credit, or letter of undertaking (LoU), is a payment mechanism used in international trade to provide an economic guarantee from a creditworthy bank to an exporter of goods. Letters of credit are used extensively in the financing of international trade, when the reliability of contracting parties cannot be readily and easily determined. Its economic effect is to introduce a bank as an underwriter that assumes the counterparty risk of the buyer paying the seller for goods.