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AbstractHow people pay is critically important to consumers and businesses alike. Many consumers are choosing to pay for goods and services from an increasing number of options. Tech‐savvy urbanites buy coffee by tapping their phone on a reader. Parents returning from a night out use peer‐to‐peer payment apps, such as Venmo, to pay the sitter. The recent explosion of financial innovations promises faster, more efficient, and cheaper transactions. These increasing digital payment options coincide with decreased number and volume of cash transactions. However, vulnerable populations face more constrained payment choices and often rely exclusively on cash. Without experience, devices, or acceptable credit histories, vulnerable populations may have little access to digital transactions. The advantages of falling digital costs and other benefits thus accrue to the digitally connected. At the same time, those who must transact in coins and paper money are likely to find their relative costs increasing. This paper highlights payment trends and the potential impact on vulnerable populations in the United States as we move toward a cashless society. This paper should stimulate discussions of public policy initiatives to mitigate digital payment issues for vulnerable people.

The manufacturing sector is critical in the realization of the economic pillar of the Kenyan Vision 2030. Over the last decade, the sector has experienced declining growth, mainly attributed to the agro-processing industry's poor financial performance. The Kenyan government has initiated stringent financial reforms across agro-based sectors, including coffee processing firms, to improve performance and increase farmers' returns. However, limited studies have investigated the impacts of working capital management (WCM) on small-scale coffee wet mills' financial performance. We assessed the effect of working capital management on financial performance in small-scale coffee wet mills. We collected the data from 41 small-scale coffee wet mills in Embu County, Eastern Kenya. We adopted a multivariate regression analysis approach on panel data (2014–2018) to analyze working capital management's impact on small-scale coffee wet mills' financial performance. Our findings showed that the current ratio and average payment period negatively affected the return on small-scale coffee wet mills' assets. Thus, the wet mill processors could lower their payables period and current ratio to improve return on assets. The study revealed that the firm's Size and age also had a positive and negative effect, respectively, on return on assets of small-scale coffee wet mills. Both average payment period and current ratio had a positive effect on return to farmers. We conclude that working capital management, that is, average payment period and current ratio, negatively influences ROA while positively influencing farmers. Therefore, the management of the coffee wet mills should increase the current ratio and lengthen the average payment period to enhance return payable to farmers.