Electronic Documents Are Reshaping Russian Logistics
The Sber2B EPD service has expanded its functionality and now supports three key freight-forwarding documents in formats approved by Russia’s Federal Tax Service – another step toward mandatory digitization of freight transportation.
The Sber2B EPD electronic shipping document service now supports freight forwarding instructions, freight forwarder’s receipts and warehouse receipts – documents that record the arrangement of transportation, the forwarder’s acceptance of cargo and its transfer into storage. All three are signed electronically, verified by an electronic document interchange operator and transmitted to the state-run GIS EPD system.
The update is significant because it prepares the market for the September 1, 2026 deadline. From that date, freight-forwarding documents, waybills, transportation orders and shipping requests will have to be issued primarily in electronic form using Federal Tax Service formats and submitted to GIS EPD. Paper documents will remain in use only in exceptional cases. For the logistics industry, this means a sweeping overhaul of processes; for the economy, lower administrative costs and the emergence of a unified digital environment for freight transportation; and for consumers, more transparent and predictable delivery of goods.
Going Digital
The main opportunities for further development lie within the Russian market: mandatory electronic documentation is creating sustained demand for GIS EPD operator services and deep integration with companies’ accounting, warehouse management, transportation management and ERP systems. The numbers speak for themselves: by early 2026, more than 30 million documents had been processed through GIS EPD, with the total more than doubling during 2025 and monthly volumes consistently exceeding 1.7 million.
For Sber2B, promising areas include automatically populating documents with data from corporate systems, bulk processing of shipments, data validation, interoperability between operators and support for companies transitioning to mandatory electronic document interchange, or EDI. By mid-2026, 11 accredited operators were connected to GIS EPD, with document exchange established between them – making the ecosystem more flexible and resilient.
The product itself has limited potential for direct export because its document formats are designed around Russian law and Federal Tax Service requirements. However, the underlying technologies – legally binding electronic exchange, signature verification and integration with government platforms – could be adapted for countries in the Eurasian Economic Union, or EAEU.
The Digitization Timeline
The transition to electronic shipping documents is the result of years of coordinated work. Russia launched GIS EPD in 2022. Initially, adoption was voluntary, and the system primarily supported road freight documents. By 2023, Russia’s Ministry of Transport, Russian Railways and FESCO had launched a pilot for electronic documentation of multimodal shipments and integration of the ETRAN rail system with GIS EPD, expanding the initiative across transportation modes.
In 2024, the number of documents in the system exceeded 7.5 million, while the first electronic maritime shipping document – a cabotage bill of lading – was introduced on a trial basis. In 2025, Federal Law No. 140-FZ established a mandatory transition to electronic shipping and freight-forwarding documents beginning September 1, 2026. Finally, in 2026, the Federal Tax Service approved standardized formats for freight forwarding instructions, freight forwarder’s receipts and warehouse receipts, after which EDI operators began adding them to their services.
Speed, Transparency and Cross-Border Opportunities
The Sber2B EPD update is an important sign that a major operator is ready for an industry-wide overhaul. In the near term, competition among operators will center on ease of integration, system reliability, interoperability, automated document completion and service costs. Companies with high shipment volumes and complex supply chains stand to see particularly significant benefits: electronic freight-forwarding documents can substantially reduce manual data entry and speed up shipment closeout.
Over the longer term, Russia’s EPD infrastructure could provide a foundation for cross-border electronic document interchange with Belarus, Kazakhstan, other EAEU countries and Azerbaijan. Doing so, however, will require harmonized formats and mutual recognition of electronic signatures and legally binding documents.
