Abstract: Small and medium-sized enterprises play an important role in the stability of the entire supply chain. Compared to core enterprises, they do not have enough initial funds and often face a shortage of funds during production. Due to the opacity of financial information, they are often subject to financial exclusion when financing from banks. Unable to obtain sufficient financing from banks, they will have to choose to raise funds from other channels, which makes them face higher risks and seriously affects the stability of the supply chain. To alleviate the current situation of difficult and expensive financing for them, supply chain finance has emerged as an innovative business. However, the effectiveness of supply chain finance business has always been influenced by some problems such as information asymmetry. Blockchain technology has received high attention from banks due to its ability to alleviate information asymmetry. Many banks have begun to introduce blockchain technology into traditional supply chain finance businesses, leading to changes in the traditional supply chain finance model. However, compared to traditional supply chain finance, from the perspective of bank decision-making, the issue of whether blockchain supply chain finance is necessarily a better choice has attracted attention and created discussion in the academic community.
From the perspective of bank decision-making, a two-echelon supply chain composed of a single capital constrained supplier and a single core enterprise is considered in the paper. After analyzing the income of the core enterprise, supplier and bank under the traditional receivable pledge financing mode and blockchain-enabled receivable chain platform financing mode, the game models of two financing modes are built based on the market demand, financing constraints and default punishment. The game models are analyzed under the conditions of complete information and incomplete information, respectively. Based on the differences in supplier initial funds, interest rates, and platform usage rates, the conditions under which blockchain-enabled receivable chain platform financing mode can bring higher returns to banks are obtained through an analysis of game equilibrium requirements.
The real-world example during the production and sales process is presented to verify the models. The simulation experiment results show that: (1)when the loan interest rate is low, the blockchain-enabled receivable chain platform financing mode is more conducive to increasing the bank’s profits in the case of complete information; (2)when the default probability of the core enterprise and supplier increases, the blockchain-enabled receivable chain platform financing mode has more advantages over the traditional receivable pledge financing mode in terms of bank profits under incomplete information; (3)from the perspective of bank decision-making, the blockchain-enabled receivable chain platform financing mode is not unconditionally superior to the traditional receivable pledge financing mode. When the loan interest rate and platform usage rate meet certain specific constraints under low pledge rates, the blockchain-enabled receivable chain platform financing mode is a better choice for banks. In this case, the relationship between the loan interest rate and platform usage rate can’t be simply determined due to the loan interest rates of other channels. When the loan interest rate and platform usage rate meet certain constraints under high pledge rates, the blockchain-enabled receivable chain platform financing mode is a better choice for banks. In this case, the loan interest rate level is higher than the platform usage rate.
The focus of this study is on whether the blockchain-enabled receivable chain platform financing mode can definitely bring higher profits to banks compared to the traditional receivable pledge financing mode, and under what constraints, the blockchain-enabled receivable chain platform financing mode is a better choice for banks compared to the traditional receivable pledge financing mode. In the future, further research will be conducted on the optimization of bank decision-making objectives, and further exploration will be conducted on platform usage rates in order to maximize the bank’s profit margin in the context of determining retail prices and given market credit rates. The acquisition of relevant results will better guide the bank’s business management practices.

Key words: accounts receivable, supply chain finance, blockchain, game model

摘要： 为了研究区块链供应链金融相对于传统供应链金融是否一定能给银行带来更高的收益,针对单个资金约束供应商和单个核心企业组成的两级供应链,对比分析了银行在两种融资模式下的收益及其决策。基于市场需求、融资约束和违约惩罚,构建了应收账款质押融资模式和区块链赋能的应收款链平台融资模式的博弈模型;剖析完全信息和不完全信息情况下银行、核心企业和供应商的决策,通过对博弈均衡实现的条件进行求解,获得了应收款链平台融资模式能给银行带来更高收益的条件。以某商品生产和销售过程期间的融资情况为例,对模型进行验证。结果表明,从银行决策视角而言,在完全信息与不完全信息情况下,应收款链平台融资模式并非无条件地优于传统应收账款质押融资模式,只有在应收账款质押率、银行贷款利率与应收款链平台使用费率之间满足某种特定约束时,应收款链平台融资模式才是银行更优的选择。

关键词: 应收账款, 供应链金融, 区块链, 博弈模型