International Business Development Resources

Trade Finance Guide: Financial Risk, Payment Methods, and Trade Finance

The guide explains the basics of trade finance so that U.S. companies, especially small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), can evaluate appropriate financing options to help ensure they get paid for their export sales.

Trade finance is a set of techniques or financial instruments used to mitigate the risks inherent in international trade to ensure payment to exporters while assuring the delivery of goods and services to importers. In other words, trade finance is a means to turn cross-border trade opportunities into real transactions by effectively managing the competing risks as well as the inherent risks facing both exporters and importers.

SBA Export Business Planner For Your Small Business

This tool is designed to serve as your roadmap for creating your Export Business Plan, exploring foreign markets, developing a Marketing Plan, exploring financing, costing your product, and more. But unlike a traditional printed manual, this Planner is a living document, ready to be customized and continually updated by you.

Chamber Export Partnership

The center is designed to assist businesses by streamlining the processing of electronic export documents for international trade. These documents include Certificates of Origin, Commercial Invoices, and Packing Lists, which are used to verify that goods originated in or were processed in a particular country. The documents are processed electronically through a technology called essCert, eliminating courier costs, the need for paper processing, and reducing turnaround time (the average turnaround is less than an hour).