Decision-making in supply chain financing leveraging the transaction information in SME segments via E-platforms

This paper presents a conceptual research of exploring the decision-making behaviors of supply chain financing (SCF) service providers (i.e. banks) in small and medium sized enterprise (SME) segments via electronic platforms (E-platforms). Specifically, this paper aims to investigate on the risk-taking behavior (i.e. offering the SCF services or not) and pricing behaviors (i.e. setting interest rate) of banks by leveraging different types of supply chain (SC) transaction information collected in the third-party E-platforms. As a result, some critical types of SC transaction information could be identified to be needed in the collaboration between banks and third-party E-platform service providers and facilitate the decision-making in SCF loans for banks. As such, some practical guidelines will be provided to help banks to select qualified SCF clients in the SME segments and make the SCF business both profitable and sustainable based on efficient decision-making practices. In addition, credit rationing theory and transaction cost theory will be deployed to help discern the problems pertinent to information asymmetry between banks and SMEs.