In recent years, supply chain finance has been in full swing. According to statistics, it is estimated that by 2020, the domestic supply chain financial market will exceed 18 trillion yuan, and the industry has huge room for development. With the expansion of scale, the limitations of the traditional supply chain financial model have gradually emerged.
For supply chain finance, the "China Business News" reporter learned through the bank that many banks have already tested the water through small blocks in the blockchain. In addition, Jingdong, Suning and other major giants have stepped up the layout blockchain.
Recently, Jingdong has opened the “Zhiyi Chain” blockchain service platform to the internal testing enterprises, and launched the main chain of the global blockchain anti-counterfeiting and traceability alliance in early August. Suning also officially released a white paper, plans to use the blockchain to create new retail, improve the upper and lower industry chain.
However, a B2B unsold seller who did not want to be named told this reporter that the technology update iteration means a huge amount of replacement costs, a series of risks such as the vested interest group hindering the advancement of technology and the stability of the system caused by the version update. At present, blockchain technology is limited by factors such as infrastructure and has poor commercial capabilities.
Banking wading blockchain technology
Bank, e-commerce test water blockchain
According to public information, supply chain finance refers to the core enterprises in the supply chain relying on their own industrial superiority position, through the control of big and small data such as cash flow, orders, purchase and sales flow of upstream and downstream enterprises, using their own funds or cooperating with financial institutions. Provide financial services to upstream and downstream cooperative enterprises. The supply chain finance trillion application market prospects provide a platform for the application of blockchain, while the blockchain provides technical support.
Wang Jian, general manager of a blockchain technology company, said in an interview with this reporter that supply chain finance faces a series of development flaws in its application, which has spawned its application requirements for new technologies such as “blockchain”. This makes the development of the "double-chain" model possible.
Wang Jian said that at the current stage, supply chain finance faces four major problems: one is the hidden risk caused by the opacity of traditional supply chain finance; the other is that the financing of SMEs is difficult, and the bank is only willing to provide factoring services for pre-paid suppliers. Funds or inventory financing; Third, the dependence of supply chain finance on core enterprises limits the development of the industry; Fourth, the operation of capital transactions is complicated.
The blockchain will greatly reduce the problems faced by supply chain finance at this stage: First, the blockchain can completely preserve node data, form a data network, and make supply chain transactions transparent; secondly, blockchain distributed accounting It can establish a strong trust relationship, provide credit guarantee for SMEs, and reduce financing costs. Thirdly, because the blockchain establishes a trustable chain network, it can no longer rely on core enterprises to achieve liberalization, diversification and market development; The blockchain can be used by all member companies in the supply chain, and the use of blockchain multi-party signature and non-tamperable features makes the transfer of creditor's rights multi-party consensus and reduces the difficulty of capital operation.
Although it is too early to talk about the blockchain subversion of the banking industry, the blockchain revolution in the banking industry has arrived. At present, the blockchain has been applied by many commercial banks.
Our reporter learned from the bank that Bank of China and China Construction Bank have all realized the operation of blockchain technology. For example, in October 2016, Bank of China launched the research and development of blockchain e-wallet; Hangzhou Fun Chain Technology Co., Ltd. won the bid for ICBC blockchain project, providing blockchain related technical training to help ICBC improve the block The construction of the bottom layer of the chain, and provide technical support, and ultimately the application of blockchain technology in ICBC products. In addition, ICBC is also involved in the issuance of central bank digital currency and research on the blockchain-based digital bill trading platform. It is reported that China Merchants Bank has also realized the three major scenarios of applying blockchain technology to cross-border direct-link clearing, global account unified view and cross-border capital collection in the global cash management field.
E-commerce supply chain financial rise
In addition to the banking industry, Jingdong, Suning and other integrated e-commerce companies have begun to operate blockchain technology for their own supply chain finance due to their own business needs.
“The blockchain ecology is based on mutual trust, and the foundation of this trust comes from the need for trust. After this demand, it also needs to have strong authority, or is extremely strong. The operation and maintenance capability promotes this. These prerequisites are not available to most enterprises in the current blockchain field, so such enterprises will gradually be eliminated under the market mechanism.” Associate Professor, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Southeast University Liu Xiaofan, director of the blockchain laboratory, said.
Song Mofei, chief analyst of Suning Financial Blockchain, pointed out in an interview with this reporter that the current blockchain application scenarios are very wide, covering financial, medical, copyright, education and other fields. It can be seen that the scenario of applying the blockchain has the following characteristics: multi-party cooperation and lack of trust, fake copying, and non-real-time trading. In this scenario, the blockchain will have a very large effect.
For example, a blacklist is a list of individuals or legal persons with serious negative credit behavior in credit records, usually deposited in various lending financial institutions, credit cards, corporate credit reporting agencies, etc. Since the blacklists of most organizations are not open to the public, users with credit problems can borrow from different institutions without being discovered in time, thus causing losses to financial institutions. In response to the above problems, Suning realized the decentralized data sharing and storage scheme by using blockchain technology.
However, Song Mofei also said that as a new technology, blockchain needs to be rebuilt, and nodes are used to build servers. The operation and maintenance cost a huge amount of money, and SMEs are more difficult to bear. In addition to the immature technology that makes the business model not well applied, the industry's perception of the blockchain, including legal regulations, whether the core enterprise masters the core technology and implements the blockchain technology to the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain is a block. The obstacles to the commercialization of the chain.