What the Responsible Business Transparency Protocol (RBTP) is, what you can do with My RBTP Credentials today, and how to issue your first credential.

Overview

Supply chain information about facilities, products, and responsible business practices is typically exchanged through questionnaires, PDFs, and spreadsheets in inconsistent formats, which each recipient must review, verify, and reconcile manually. This makes it difficult to confirm where information came from, whether it has been altered, whether it is still current, and how it compares with data from other sources. The Responsible Business Transparency Protocol addresses this by enabling companies to issue standardized, verifiable digital credentials that can be compared consistently across suppliers, customers, and systems. Each company publishes its facility and assessment information at a web address it controls and decides who can access it.

The Responsible Business Transparency Protocol (RBTP) is the RBA's extension of the United Nations Transparency Protocol (UNTP), an open data protocol governed at the UN level for the standardized exchange of verifiable supply chain data.

RBTP is a standard, not a platform. Nobody has to join a shared system for this to work. The comparison the UNTP team uses is banking: you do not ask your customers and suppliers to open accounts at your bank so that you can pay them. Banks agreed on common standards instead. RBTP does the same thing for supply chain evidence, so your data stays with you and your customers can still read it whatever software they use.

To support RBTP and UNTP credential issuance and exchange, the RBA has developed My RBTP Credentials, a tool that enables companies to issue RBTP credentials, link verified conformance claims to their facilities, and share digital credentials easily.

Why use the Responsible Business Transparency Protocol?

RBTP gives companies across the electronics, automotive, and minerals supply chains a common way to share and evaluate responsible business information. Suppliers can issue a single verifiable credential for a facility and reuse it with every customer that requests that information, rather than preparing a separate response for each request. Customers can request credentials in place of documents and confirm their source and currency without a manual review step.

Because RBTP is built on UNTP, credentials issued through My RBTP Credentials are designed to be interoperable with other UNTP-compliant credentials, including those issued outside of RBA. Companies retain control of their data while making it usable by any partner whose systems support UNTP.

Current capabilities of My RBTP Credentials

My RBTP Credentials is available to any company with facilities registered in RBA Online. Companies that do not yet use RBA Online can register and add their facilities first (see My RBTP User Guides below). Users can:

See your facilities. The tool shows the facilities already registered to your company in RBA Online. There is nothing to set up or import.

Create a digital facility record. This is a verifiable record of a facility: where it is, who operates it, which RBA assessments it holds, and any country-of-origin claims or external credentials you choose to add. You can create both an unencrypted and an encrypted record for the same facility, so you can share different levels of detail with different audiences, and you can issue a new version of a record whenever its information changes.

Include country-of-origin claims. You can add self-declared country-of-origin information for both mined and secondary (recycled or scrap) materials to a facility record. These are your own declarations rather than assessed results, and the record makes that distinction clear to whoever receives it.

View digital versions of your RMAP and VAP results. Where your facility has a valid RMAP or VAP assessment, the RBA issues a digital conformity credential for it. You do not create these yourself. They are generated from your existing assessment results.

Attach external credentials. You can attach credentials issued by other organizations, such as third-party certifications or assessments, to a facility record. These must be unencrypted, so that whoever receives your record can open and check them alongside your RBA information.

Use the Credential Library. Every record you create, every credential the RBA issues for your facilities, and every external credential you choose to add is kept in one place, so you can find, review, and reuse them.

Share a record. Each record has a link and a QR code that you can send to the parties you choose.

Access and visibility

You choose this for every record you create:

The underlying principle is that you share what is useful to share and nothing more. Creating a record does not put your data into a central database, and it does not make it visible to the RBA's other members. Records stay under your control, and you decide what is made available to all through unencrypted records, and what stays private through encrypted records.

Issuing your first credential

How you start depends on whether your company already uses RBA Online.

If your company already uses RBA Online

1. 1Sign in to My RBTP Credentials and review the facilities listed for your company. You will need to sign in with the email address registered with RBA Online, then enter the one-time passcode emailed to you.
2. 2Create your first facility record. Start with one facility and a small amount of information. You can add country-of-origin claims or external credentials later.
3. 3Share the link or QR code with a customer who has asked for that information.

If your company is new to RBA Online

Companies whose facilities are not yet in RBA Online, including companies that are not RBA members, register once before issuing records.

1. 1Complete the RBTP Facility Registration form, using your company email address where possible.
2. 2When your registration is approved, set your password, log in to RBA Online, complete your company information, and add your facilities.
3. 3RBA reviews each facility and emails you within two business days. After approval, allow 24 hours for your facilities to appear in My RBTP Credentials.
4. 4Issue your first record by following the steps in If your company already uses RBA Online.

A good way to start is with one facility and one customer who has already asked you for that information. That is enough to see how the record works from the receiving end before you create records across the rest of your facilities.

If you would like more support:

The guides are also available in Chinese (Simplified) – 简体中文, Japanese – 日本語, and Korean – 한국어. See guides in other languages in the FAQs.

About the standard behind RBTP

RBTP is built on UNTP, which is moving from version 0.7 to its first production release, version 1.0. RBTP will move to version 1.0 when it is published. In practice this does not change anything about how you use the tool, but it is worth knowing if your technical teams ask. Full technical specifications for UNTP are published by UNECE, and the RBTP specifications are maintained separately for anyone implementing directly against them.

Support and resources

Answers to common questions about records, sharing, and assessments are covered in the FAQs.

For anything else, contact the RBTP Help Desk at rbtphelpdesk@responsiblebusiness.org.