I didn't know about these merchant protections (guaranteeing the right to offer different prices for different payment methods):
In the US, merchants have explicit legal authority to charge different prices based on the consumer’s method of payment. The Cash Discount Act of 1981 gave merchants the right to offer discounts on cash payments, while the Durbin Amendment of 2010 allowed merchants to offer discounts for debit cards. For credit cards, a 2013 settlement between the Department of Justice and major credit card companies authorized merchants to charge markups on this payment method for the first time.[7] Fees on card transactions are so varied that it is hard for merchants to know exactly how much they’ll get at the point of sale.
It's difficult to see how credit card companies and payment processors like stripe, paypal, and venmo are going to compete. Any merchant (brick and mortar or online) can get internet access and with that use a wallet. The question though is which protocol wins here. If as a merchant I can save 2% on every transaction by accepting stablecoins, it seems pretty easy to choose to do that. But which stablecoin? and how do I receive it? I'm going to want one that I have a high confidence most of my customers are comfortable with. This seems like the next scramble. Makes sense that CashApp and Square are pushing hard to integrate bitcoin payment flows.
Whatever stablecoin you use, it has to run on something (possibly just a database on AWS), and I'd imagine what wins there is the stablecoin with the biggest network. It's unclear which network that is.
Stablecoins are also more likely to be homogenous in asset composition. Unlike commercial banks, which can theoretically back their liabilities with anything after meeting capital requirements, Genius-regulated stablecoins will be mostly backed by government debt. Ironically, the most distinct part of their balance sheets will be deposits they keep at commercial banks. Homogeneity of assets is likely to lead to parity in liabilities. The adoption of stablecoins could also spur the formation of private sector clearinghouses that enforce their own margin requirements on members and provide guaranteed convertibility.
Also, if what most people want out of a bank is a place for their paychecks to hit and from which they can pay bills and make transfers to places where they save, perhaps we are going to see a segmenting of banks: you'll get a loan from one kind of business and you'll use a stablecoin wallet as your checking account and you'll save in bitcoin (hopefully).
Is there a world where all of this runs on Bitcoin? Maybe. But it's feeling like bitcoin payments are more likely to be a parallel payment network that some places will accept in addition to whatever stablecoin they like, not necessarily the network on which the coins operate.