By Dave CopelandGlobe Correspondent

Until six months ago, whenever GT Solar Inc. loaded machines used by other companies to make solar panels onto ships bound for Asia, company officials were never certain when they might be paid for the equipment.

The problem stemmed from the antiquated "letter of credit" system used by shipping firms since the days of Marco Polo. International wire transfers, foreign banks, and lots of paperwork all offered opportunities for a glitch to delay payment, by weeks or months.

"It's one of those complex things where you need to cross every T and dot every I, or you have a discrepancy," said Michael Pratt, treasurer of the Merrimack, N.H., company. "A single discrepancy is enough for one of these foreign banks to push the whole thing back to you."

That changed this year when GT Solar started using an online trading platform developed by Trade Technologies Inc., of Austin, Texas.

The system lets both shippers and receivers track payments, a streamlined process that bypasses the older system's flaws and slow pace. Similar to the way an investor can monitor stocks by logging into a brokerage firm's website, a shipper can use Trade Technologies' site to get frequently updated information about shipments and payments.

"The bottom line is they get us paid faster," Pratt said.

Trade Technologies expects to process payments on $9 billion worth of shipments this year, up from $5.5 billion last year and $1 billion in 2005, though the company handles just a fraction of the transactions in the $10 trillion global shipping industry. Many businesses still rely on the paper system, which involves using courier services to shuffle documents around the globe. A single difference between the letter of credit and the ship's manifest can cause headaches.

For example, Trade Technologies' chief executive, Kirk Lundburg, said that something as innocuous as writing "300 units of widget X" on the letter of credit when the ship's manifest says it is carrying "300 units of X widget" can stall a payment. "The old system requires a tremendous amount of

accuracy," he said.

The company was founded in 1999, but its business model started to take hold just five years ago, Lundburg said. In the early days, there was doubt among shippers and receivers that the online system could work.

Resistance to change "has been the biggest burden to overcome," Lundburg said. "People just didn't believe we could get them paid easier."

The company's technology was developed by a Texas cotton exporter that grew increasingly frustrated with how long it took to receive payments for shipments to the Middle East, Turkey, and China. Growth has been steady ever since; last November, Trade Technologies added its 20th Fortune 500 company to its client list.

The service is particularly helpful to smaller companies like GT Solar, which has 225 employees at its New Hampshire plant.

"A lot of companies just don't have people in house who understand this system," said Lundburg, who joined the company last year.

"Letters of credit is their world," Pratt said. Trade Technologies helps "eliminate 99 percent of the discrepancies that can delay payment."

Similar to the way an investor can monitor stocks by logging into a brokerage firm's website, a shipper can use Trade Technologies' site to get frequently updated information about shipments and payments.

For some shippers, Web's making life easierBut others still cling to complex, time-consuming letters of credit to get paid

Kirk Lundburg, CEO of Trade Technologies Inc., of Austin, Texas, was in Boston recently to promote his company's online platform

to help shippers and receivers track payments.