Editor’s Note
While supply chain finance offers vital support to SMEs, this article highlights that successfully managing such assets requires significant platform expertise and robust risk controls, underscoring that accessibility for borrowers does not equate to simplicity for providers.

Supply chain finance is considered a high-quality asset within the internet finance industry. While it lowers the financing threshold for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this does not mean the barrier to entry for platforms to deploy supply chain finance assets is low.
On July 2, 2018, Yibao Research Institute released the “2018 Supply Chain Finance Industry Development Trend Research Report”. The report points out that supply chain finance is a high-quality asset in the internet finance sector. Although it reduces the financing barriers for SMEs, it does not imply a low threshold for platforms to enter this asset class. For internet finance companies, the key to survival lies in finding high-quality enterprise partners and mastering advanced technologies such as big data risk control, blockchain, and artificial intelligence.

This model involves the deep integration of internet technology to create a comprehensive large service platform. This platform replaces the core enterprise “1” to provide credit support for the SMEs “N” on the platform, forming a disruptive “1+N” ecosystem.

The report identifies five primary business models for supply chain finance: Banks, Third-Party Payment Platforms, E-commerce Platforms, Supply Chain/Logistics Companies, and P2P Lending Platforms.
B2B platform models have the highest compatibility with supply chain finance. As B2B e-commerce continues to grow, supply chain finance is also expected to experience significant expansion.

The following is the original report (referenced).