• Secure Authentication Scheme for an Agricultural Supply Chain Finance Environment

Abstract

The rapid development of information technology and popularization of the Internet have driven many innovative applications in the finance sector. The adoption of supply chain finance (SCF) is an example of this new wave of innovations in financial technology. SCF yields a set of solutions that optimizes cash flow by enabling large buyers to lengthen payment terms while providing bank finances to small and medium-sized enterprises, thereby enabling them to receive early payments throughout the leverage connection. To strengthen the development of SCF programs, major national governments have adopted a succession of control measures, such as the Ocean Garden finance program in Mexico, the Alibaba-Suning, the JD.com China-based SCF solutions, and the Hon Hai/Foxconn Technology Group’s SCF platform in Taiwan. According to the model that has revolutionized manufacturing and services, promoting this financing platform for agricultural production is also appropriate. This technology-based platform is an interoperable infrastructure that systematizes the execution of an agricultural SCF process, thereby bringing agricultural financing to agricultural productive cooperatives, farmer households, and financial institutions as an effectively automated financial management solution. Additionally, an online collaborative platform in agricultural SCF must provide a highly secure environment for transaction processing and information sharing between multiple parties. Accordingly, this paper presents a novel scheme that uses elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) features to offer high security and reliable performance and enable the use of innovative financing mechanisms in an agricultural SCF communication platform. By considering malicious activities in cyberspace, we analyzed security scenarios and implemented proper countermeasures against growing cyber threats. Furthermore, our estimation results indicated that the proposed scheme can achieve excellent performance with extremely small parameters. With such an appropriate design, the scheme will likely lead to more effective and efficient safeguards for the agricultural SCF program.

Keywords: Supply Chain Finance, Financing Platform, Elliptic Curve Cryptography, Cyberspace