FCA — Free Carrier
The seller clears for export and hands the goods to a carrier the buyer nominated. The workhorse rule for containers.
- Group
- F — Main carriage unpaid
- Transport mode
- Any mode, including multimodal.
- Named place
- Where the goods are handed to the carrier — the seller's premises, a depot, or a terminal.
- Main carriage paid by
- Buyer
- Risk passes
- Delivery to the buyer's carrier
- Export clearance
- Seller
- Import clearance and duties
- Buyer
- Seller must insure
- No obligation on either party. Arrange your own cover.
- Unloading at destination
- Buyer.
FCA splits on where the named place is, and the split matters. If it is the seller's premises, the seller loads the goods onto the buyer's collecting vehicle and risk passes once they are loaded. If it is anywhere else, the seller delivers the goods on their own vehicle, ready for unloading, and risk passes there — the seller does not unload.
Export clearance is the seller's, which is the substantive improvement on EXW and the reason FCA is the sensible default for almost any container movement.
Incoterms 2020 added an option specifically for letters of credit: the parties can agree that the buyer instructs the carrier to issue an on-board bill of lading to the seller. Before this, a seller delivering a container at an inland depot under FCA had no straightforward route to the on-board bill their credit demanded, which is a large part of why people reached for FOB instead and misused it.
Name the place precisely. "FCA Shanghai" is ambiguous between the seller's factory and the port, and those are different deliveries, different risk transfer points and different costs.
Always write the rule with its named place and the version — FCA [named place], Incoterms 2020. The rule says nothing about when ownership transfers; that is for your sales contract.