If a contract (e.g. an import L/C) has to be changed detrimentally for the beneficiary, the beneficiary has to accept this amendment, otherwise it is not effective. These types of amendment are, for example, reductions of amount and maturity or changing the description of goods, that describe a better quality or a tighter/additional inspections. Usually the foreign bank forwards the request of amendment to the beneficiary, but does not have to make sure, that an acknowledgment actually has to be returned. Normally, the beneficiary has coordinated the amendment with the importer beforehand and thus there is no need for him to send an acknowledgment again, so that usually no acknowledgment is returned. According to the currently valid rules and for this kind of acknowledgments of amendments, there are no deadlines set, so that usually with the next presentation of the documents an implicit acceptance for the amendment can be identified.

In order to complicate these circumstances, additional amendment requests can be submitted after an amendment request to be confirmed, but before the explicit or implicit confirmation of the other party has been received.

A big challenge in handling such amendment is, that the underlying contract cannot be changed without the confirmation has been received. Thus, on each additional amendment of the contract the bank clerks have to be informed, that there are, for example, unconfirmed amendment requests available.