Banks Authenticating Beneficiaries’ Drawings: Advantageous or Unnecessary?

Fraud prevention is an ongoing goal. In the world of commercial LCs, standby LCs, and demand guarantees subject to either UCP 600, ISP98, or URDG758, banks/guarantors are not responsible for vetting or otherwise verifying any signatures on any of the drawing documents received.  Additionally, the basic premise of the various rules is that banks are not responsible to vet any content or otherwise go beyond the four corners of any required document to determine whether any statement is true or false.  

However, with the exception of UCP, these same rules indicate that when a non-paper or data demand is allowed, the bank receiving the data is expected to authenticate the sender of the data (data could be transmitted by a beneficiary, its forwarder, transportation carrier, chamber of commerce, etc.) in some manner, understanding that different systems/platforms employ different methods to ensure an authentication process. eUCP would be the applicable rules for data demands allowed by a commercial LC.