Protections for online consumers, digitalization of customs procedures and recognition of electronic signatures figure among the measures laid out in the text aimed at promoting and facilitating digital transactions.

European trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis hailed the text as "historic", writing on social network X that countries had "negotiated the first global rules on digital trade".

"This will facilitate e-transactions, boost innovation, and integrate developing countries into the digital economy," he said.

Once in place, the deal "will make trade faster, cheaper, fairer and more secure", Britain said in a statement.

Digital commerce is growing far faster than its traditional counterpart.

The OECD group of economically developed nations says it estimated that in 2020, e-commerce already made up a quarter of global trade, making it worth just under $5 trillion.

Despite its growing importance, "no common set of global rules exist", said British Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds.

Finalizing the negotiations "is a huge step forward in correcting that and ensuring British businesses feel the benefit". 

The talks were launched in 2019, with around 90 negotiating countries, representing 90 percent of the WTO membership, including heavy-hitters like the US, the European Union and China.

Australia, Japan and Singapore, which have jointly been leading the Initiative on Electronic Commerce talks, presented a joint statement during a closed-door meeting at the WTO confirming that "after five years of negotiations, participants had achieved a stabilized text".

But actual implementation of a deal could still be years off.

A small number of negotiating countries have yet to sign on, including the United States, Brazil, Indonesia and Turkey, the declaration said.

"The text released today [...] represents an important step forward for the WTO in a sector of growing importance to the global economy," US ambassador and Deputy US Trade Representative Maria Pagan said in a statement.

But the US considers that "the current text falls short and more work is needed", she said, pointing in particular to an "essential security exception".  

The co-conveners of the talks have in recent months stressed the importance of landing a deal, stressing it could facilitate electronic transactions, promote digital trade and foster an open and trusted digital economy.

"This would be the first-ever set of baseline digital trade rules," Singapore's ambassador to the WTO Tan Hung Seng said in April.

"It would contribute to the growing e-commerce in our countries by providing greater legal predictability and certainty, against the backdrop of increasing regulatory fragmentation," he said.

In Friday's statement, UK Science Secretary Peter Kyle said the agreement aimed "to help people use technology safely by protecting them from fraud, while driving economic growth through the digitalization of trade so it's faster and more secure".  

The agreement also includes a component providing preferential treatment to developing countries.

In addition to paving the way for digitalizing customs documents and processes, the text also seeks to make permanent a long-held moratorium exempting electronic transactions from customs duties.

The moratorium has been in place since 1998, and has been extended at each WTO ministerial meeting since. It is currently set to expire in 2026.

Once in force the agreement will permanently ban customs duties on digital content," the British statement said.

The aim is to incorporate the digital trade rules into the WTO legal framework, but that would require consensus backing from all members, including those not part of the deal.

That could be tricky at a time when countries like India and South Africa are balking at what they see as a proliferation of plurilateral agreements within the WTO rather than the all-but-impossible multilateral deals backed by all members.

One solution, observers say, could be for the signatories to move the agreement to another international body. But if they do that, they would not be able to rely on the WTO's mechanism for resolving trade disputes.