Supply chain finance platform evaluation based on acceptability analysis

With the rapid development of financial technology, an increasing number of supply chain finance (SCF) service platforms have sprung up to optimize the flows of financial resources, information and materials in the supply chain. The evaluation and selection of SCF platforms have consequently become critical issues not only for platform customers but also for competitors. Although the practices and challenges of SCF have been analyzed in-depth and several studies have investigated the factors that influence SCF platform performance, research on the evaluation of different SCF platforms is scarce. To comprehensively evaluate different types of SCF platforms, this study first identifies critical factors that influence the performance of SCF platforms. A stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis for group decision-making (SMAA-2) model is then applied to address the SCF platform evaluation problem. Finally, a questionnaire survey is conducted to validate the accuracy of the proposed evaluation model. The empirical results show that the proposed method provides rankings similar to the survey results and thus is accurate and reliable. The evaluation factors and the rankings of SCF platforms can provide references and decision support not only for financial service providers and platform customers but also for regulatory institutions.