So... given that adding full support for BTC to the existing payments infrastructure is achievable without too much technical effort, it strikes me that effort would be best spent overcoming the non-technical objections/blockers, rather than investing effort reinventing technical solutions that don't seem to be needed.... am I missing something? Is the main problem that people don't like the fees imposed by Visa/MC? Dislike of the idea of an intermediary? (i.e. a vision that all BTC users in the future will transact directly across the Blockchain?) Something else?
The idea Is that If there is inefficiencies in the system in the form of middlemen then they should be eliminated, I dislike Visa & MC, they between them have a duopoly, they refused to process payments for wikileaks they are not your fiend. We have been given technology that liberates us from centralisation and now everybody wants to know how they pay their taxes or who they can use to store their bitcoins and why can't we use the normal payment systems, This is ridiculous if we do theses things then we might as well give up using bitcoin.
It's not that hard to enable customers to pay merchants in Btc and with a little bit of ingenuity and funding I think a system that makes use of most of the retailers existing EPOS devices could be found with maybe a small device that can be plugged in, if a company selling these devices also does Btc -> Fiat conversion I'm sure they could make enough to make these devices very cheap or even free for merchants.