Free Carrier
Free Carrier (FCA) is the Incoterm where the seller delivers to a carrier nominated by the buyer at a named place — typically either the seller's premises (similar to EXW but with seller-handled loading and export) or a forwarder's origin warehouse.
FCA sits in the "seller delivers at origin" family of Incoterms, along with EXW. Unlike EXW, under FCA the seller handles export clearance and loading. This matches real-world practice better than EXW and is the current INCOTERMS 2020 recommendation for most international moves.
What's included
- Seller: Packages goods, handles export customs clearance, delivers to the named place (and loads if the named place is the seller's own premises), transfers risk at that delivery point.
- Buyer: Main carriage, insurance, import clearance, destination inland transport, unloading.
FCA vs EXW
The big difference: under FCA, the seller takes care of export clearance and loading at origin. Under EXW, the buyer does. Because export clearance usually requires a resident entity, EXW often doesn't match how the work actually flows — FCA does.
FCA vs FOB
FOB (Free on Board) is sometimes used interchangeably with FCA for ocean freight, but they're not the same:
- FOB transfers risk when the goods cross the ship's rail at the loading port. Appropriate for bulk and break-bulk.
- FCA transfers risk when the goods are handed to the carrier (which, for containerized ocean freight, is at the origin CY or CFS — not on the vessel).
For containerized ocean freight, FCA is the correct term. FOB is technically wrong for containers, though it remains common in practice. INCOTERMS 2020 guidance is explicit: use FCA for containers.
FCA with letter of credit
A 2020 update to FCA added an optional "on-board B/L" clause: the buyer can instruct their carrier to issue the B/L with an "on-board" notation, which satisfies letter-of-credit requirements that previously forced sellers to use FOB. This closed a long-standing gap and makes FCA viable for transactions that bankers were insisting on FOB for.
