On occasion, we have seen issues raised surrounding the acceptance and/or rejection of amendments under UCP 600, and the content of UCP 600 sub-article 10 (c).
For instance, it has been stated that because this sub-article gives the beneficiary the right to refrain from notifying acceptance or rejection of an amendment, this could possibly enable beneficiary's to unfairly take advantage of the existing time-gap and subsequently impact upon the interests of both the applicant and the issuing bank.
It has been further stated that, in order to surmount this issue, it should be possible to set a binding deadline for acceptance of any proposed amendment.
This has been addressed in numerous Opinions and, additionally, through various revisions of the UCP - there is no absolute solution to such a problem.
The most recent ICC Opinion that addressed this issue was R795 (TA.820rev4). This Opinion concluded that when a beneficiary makes a presentation without having communicated either its acceptance or rejection of an amendment, and such presentation complies with the original credit terms but would not comply with the amended credit (i.e. not taking into account the amendment issued), the amendment will be deemed to have not yet been accepted or rejected by the beneficiary.
It additionally stated that a beneficiary could accept an amendment at any time, including after several presentations made later than the date the amendment was advised to it.
During the course of the revision of UCP 500, ICC National Committees provided a number of options to take this forward. Whilst consideration was given to including a timeline for acceptance of an amendment, it was decided to continue with the core principles of UCP 500 sub-article 9 (d) (ii).
From a legal perspective, an amendment advice from a bank can be interpreted as an offer. As such, this offer requires formal acceptance, which, if not provided, means that the amendment remains solely as an offer and has no value as a contract.