There are participants. Question of how you define “middle” and in between whom. When you pay the deliveryperson, florist, kid who shoveled your driveway in ca

There are participants. Question of how you define “middle” and in between whom. When you pay the deliveryperson, florist, kid who shoveled your driveway in cash, there are zero participants between you and that person. How you got that cash depends on a physical supply chain. Generally, going to an ATM is pretty easy. Our payment system is currently the worst of both: only electrons and magnetic regions, but lots of them in the way siphoning off their cut.