Intro: One of the recurring headaches in L/C practice is what to do with discrepant documents. The beneficiary wants their money, the nominated bank worries about reimbursement, and the issuing bank sits in the middle waiting for the applicant’s word. A common query is whether the issuing bank can “pre-approve” or authorize payment against documents with discrepancies, and what that …

QUESTION Dear Sir, Sometimes the beneficiary presents the discrepant documents and requests my bank to negotiate the documents. In this case we would forward the documents to the issuing bank stating the discrepancies and ask for the issuing bank’s authorization or approval for us to negotiate the documents. Sometimes the issuing bank gives us its authorization to negotiate such documents. …