Will seafarers still need to carry paper certificates in the future? At Posidonia 2026 in Athens, LedgID Ltd officially launched as a neutral maritime digital identity platform, with two notable announcements:

It became the first signatory to the BIMCO Seafarer Digital Certificate Charter, and named The Mission to Seafarers as its official welfare partner.

Founded by Peter Schellenberger, Henning Dierks Davies and Ronald Spithout, LEDGID brings together experience across maritime consultancy, digital learning, crew welfare, connectivity and maritime technology.

This may sound like another digitalisation story. But for seafarers, it touches something very practical.

For decades, seafarers have carried certificates, training records, medical documents and sea-time evidence across vessels, employers, crewing agencies and jurisdictions. Every change of contract can mean another round of submission, checking, copying and verification.
LEDGID’s model points to a different future: one verified digital professional identity owned by the seafarer, where certificates, sea time, experience and compliance records can be portable, auditable and reusable across the maritime ecosystem.

The key here is not simply turning paper into PDFs. The real value lies in trust, portability and interoperability.

With BIMCO's Seafarer Digital Certificate Charter providing an industry framework, and The Mission to Seafarers bringing in its global welfare network across more than 200 ports, this initiative also shows that seafarer digitalisation cannot remain only at headquarters or conference booths. It must reach the places where seafarers actually are: onboard ships, at port centres, and during short port calls far from home.

For Chinese seafarers, crewing agencies, ship managers and training institutions, this is also worth watching closely.

If digital seafarer credentials become more widely accepted internationally, they could help reduce repeated verification, improve career mobility, strengthen compliance management and make professional records genuinely travel with the individual.

Shipping digitalisation has often focused on ships, cargoes, fuel efficiency and emissions.

This time, the focus is back on the people who keep world trade moving.

Maybe the future seafarer will no longer carry a stack of paper certificates.

Instead, they will carry a trusted, verifiable and portable professional identity