Transaction Certificates
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Overview
Transaction Certificates are a widely used form of transaction-level conformity evidence in textile certification schemes. They attest that a specific quantity of material or product has moved between parties under defined chain-of-custody conditions, as observed by an independent third-party assessor.
This pattern is common across many established textile certification standards, including the Global Recycled Standard (GRS), Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), and Responsible Wool Standard (RWS), among others. In these systems, Transaction Certificates serve as shipment-level or batch-level attestations that complement facility-level Scope Certificates, enabling downstream actors to verify that certified materials have been properly transferred through the supply chain while maintaining the integrity of chain-of-custody claims.
While these standards share the common concept of Transaction Certificates, each has historically implemented them using proprietary formats—typically paper or PDF documents with scheme-specific fields and terminology. This fragmentation limits interoperability and creates barriers to digital traceability across multi-standard supply chains.
The UNTP Textiles Extension provides a standardized, digital foundation for Transaction Certificates that can be extended by individual certification schemes to meet their specific requirements. In this extension, Transaction Certificates are represented as specialised profiles of the UNTP Digital Conformity Credential (DCC). This approach allows Transaction Certificates to leverage the existing UNTP trust infrastructure while adding transaction-specific attestation capabilities, and provides a common data model that individual schemes can build upon.
This specification defines the core Transaction Certificate structure and requirements, establishing a neutral foundation that certification schemes can extend to support their own terminology, additional fields, and scheme-specific validation rules. The specification does not introduce new UNTP core object types, ensuring compatibility with the broader UNTP ecosystem.
A Transaction Certificate is a Digital Conformity Credential that:
- attests to a material or product transaction, rather than solely to a facility or product state
- asserts quantitative claims associated with that transaction
- references upstream conformity evidence used as inputs
- is issued by a recognised conformity assessment body
The credential represents an attestation about a specific transaction context, including the involved parties and declared quantities, enabling verification of chain-of-custody claims at the transaction level.
Relationship to UNTP Core Models
Transaction Certificates are implemented as Digital Conformity Credentials that conform to the UNTP Digital Conformity Credential specification. They reuse existing UNTP identity and facility primitives rather than introducing new object types.
To maintain interoperability with UNTP core models:
- Organisations involved in a transaction are referenced using Digital Identity Anchors (DIA)
- Facilities involved in a transaction are typically referenced using Digital Facility Records (DFR)
- Upstream conformity evidence is referenced using other Digital Conformity Credentials (DCC)
This approach avoids redundant embedding of identity or facility data, keeping credentials lightweight while maintaining referential integrity across the UNTP data model.
Transaction Certificate as a DCC Profile
Required Claim Structure
A Transaction Certificate claim includes the following conceptual elements, which together provide a complete attestation of the transaction's conformity to applicable standards.
Transaction Context
The claim identifies the transaction being attested, including a transaction identifier, transaction date, and the roles of involved parties (e.g. seller, buyer, consignee, processor). All parties are referenced via DIA and/or DFR identifiers to maintain interoperability with UNTP core models.
The Transaction Context structure is formally defined in the Transaction Certificate JSON Schema. The TransactionContext object includes:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| transactionId | A unique identifier for the transaction being attested |
| buyer | The party receiving the material or product (referenced as a Party object with id, name, and optional registeredId) |
| seller | The party transferring the material or product (referenced as a Party object with id, name, and optional registeredId) |
Both buyer and seller parties are represented using the Party type from the core UNTP vocabulary (as used in Digital Product Passports and other UNTP models). For enhanced verification and trust, parties may also be referenced via Digital Identity Anchors (DIA) or Digital Facility Records (DFR), which provide resolvable identity and facility information. This approach maintains interoperability with UNTP core models while allowing flexibility in how parties are identified and verified.
Shipment and Document References
The claim may include references to commercial or logistical documents associated with the transaction, such as invoices, shipment or transport documents, and batch or shipment identifiers. These references may be provided as identifiers or resolvable links, enabling verification of the transaction against supporting documentation.
Material and Quantity Assertions
The claim asserts one or more quantitative statements relating to the transaction, including:
- the material or product being transferred
- declared quantities
- units of measure
- the basis of measurement (e.g. certified quantity, net quantity)
Each quantitative assertion is explicitly associated with the transaction being attested, providing clear traceability of certified quantities through the supply chain.
Certificate Lineage
The claim references upstream conformity credentials that support the asserted transaction, including scope-level credentials and prior transaction certificates. These references are expressed as identifiers of other DCCs, enabling verification of certificate lineage and ensuring that the transaction builds upon valid upstream certifications.
Declarations
The claim includes one or more formal declarations made by the issuing conformity assessment body stating that the transaction complies with the applicable conformity criteria. These declarations provide the authoritative statement of conformity that downstream actors rely upon when accepting certified materials.
Schema Definition
The formal data structure for Transaction Certificates is defined in the Transaction Certificate JSON Schema (version 0.0.1).
This schema extends the UNTP Digital Conformity Credential (DCC) structure and includes:
- Standard DCC envelope properties (
@context,id,issuer,validFrom,validUntil,credentialSubject) - A
TransactionCertificateAttestationtype that includes theTransactionContextstructure - Support for referencing parties, facilities, products, and upstream conformity credentials
Implementations should conform to this schema when creating Transaction Certificates for the UNTP Textiles Extension to ensure interoperability and compatibility with UNTP tooling and validators.
Out of Scope
This specification defines the core Transaction Certificate model but does not:
- define scheme-specific terminology or certification rules (e.g., GRS-specific label grades, GOTS-specific material categories)
- prescribe chain-of-custody accounting methods (e.g. mass balance, segregation)
- define internal certification body workflows
- duplicate identity or facility information already modelled by DIA or DFR
Individual certification schemes are expected to extend this base model to support their specific requirements. For example, a GRS Transaction Certificate extension might add fields for recycled material composition percentages and label grades, while a GOTS extension might add organic content percentages and processing stage information. Such scheme-specific extensions may be addressed in future extension profiles or scheme-specific alignments, allowing this specification to remain neutral across different certification schemes and methodologies while providing a common foundation for interoperability.
Interoperability Considerations
Transaction Certificates defined by this extension are designed to:
- enable interoperable, digital representation of transaction-level conformity evidence across different certification schemes
- support linking between conformity credentials and traceability events
- provide a neutral foundation that individual certification schemes can extend while maintaining core interoperability
By establishing a common base model, this specification enables systems to process Transaction Certificates from multiple schemes using shared tooling and validators, while still allowing each scheme to add its own extensions. Implementations should ensure that Transaction Certificates can be verified independently and composed with other UNTP objects, enabling flexible integration into diverse supply chain systems and workflows that may span multiple certification standards.