플랫폼 선정산이 디지털 소상공인의 금융 안정성에 미치는 영향 = Platform Early Settlement and Financial Stability among Digital Small and Medium-sized Enterprises: Evidence from Cash Buffer Days

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Digital small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face severe liquidity constraints arising from settlement delays between online sales and cash inflows, which threaten their financial stability in highly competitive e-commerce environments. To mitigate this constraint, online platform operators have introduced early settlement services that shorten settlement cycles. This study empirically examines how such early settlement services affect the financial stability of digital SMEs, focusing on cash buffer days. Using survey data from 631 online SMEs in Korea, we conduct mean-difference analyses comparing users and non-users of early settlement services. The results indicate that SMEs adopting early settlement maintain, on average, an additional 22 days of liquidity buffer. However, this effect exhibits significant heterogeneity across firm characteristics and industry sectors. The benefits are concentrated among low-revenue firms and in sectors characterized by severe financial constraints and limited inventory-based buffering capacity, particularly food and beverage retailers. The findings extend research on online platform finance by shifting attention from credit provision to the design of settlement mechanisms and by demonstrating how early settlement can strengthen precautionary cash holdings. The study offers strategic and policy implications for e-commerce platforms and regulators seeking to ease liquidity constraints for digital SMEs