Blockchain‐enabled credit guarantee financing in a three‐tier supply chain considering performance risk

Deep‐tier suppliers often face challenges in obtaining financing for production due to their limited scale and restricted access to capital. The application of blockchain technology enables the creditworthiness of core enterprises (CEs) to extend to small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) upstream in the supply chain. This credit transfer capability helps overcome trust barriers between CEs, deep‐tier SMEs, and commercial banks, making it easier for both businesses and banks to provide guarantees and financing to these smaller suppliers. Building on a three‐tier supply chain model, this study investigates the operational strategies associated with blockchain‐enabled supply chain financing. The results show that blockchain‐enabled credit transfer across supply chain tiers allows the financially constrained tier‐2 supplier to obtain more favorable financing conditions; however, whether the supplier benefits from such financing depends on its operating state. The tier‐2 supplier benefits from blockchain‐enabled guarantee financing only when it has a low unit production cost and moderate operational efficiency. For the manufacturer acting as the guarantor, the conditions for preferring blockchain‐enabled guarantee financing are more restrictive because it bears the potential default risk. In addition, our results show that blockchain‐enabled guarantee financing can effectively incentivize the tier‐2 supplier to improve its delivery performance and transmit these improvements to the downstream market through supply chain decisions, thereby increasing consumer surplus.