Thanks for the responses. So we all agree that merchants will have to incentivize people to use BTC then? Not as sweet of a deal as it originally sounded for merchants, but overall it appears as though they can still save a percentage point or two overall. So far...

Consider this:

Bloomberg ran an interesting article the other day that pointed to the fact that the BTC network pays for itself by releasing a constant supply of coins into the market (to miners) which acts to constantly drive the price of BTC down. This amounts to approximately 3.9% at current volumes. ** This percentage will surely go down with an increase in volume and decrease in inflation over time, but still in my opinion, AT BEST it will be 1.5% over the next eight years or so.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-02/bitcoin-is-an-expensive-way-to-pay-for-stuff.html

So we have we have 1% deposit fee onto the consumer, and 2-3% onto the merchant as an "incentive fee" in order to compete with CC companies. This averages out to 1.5-2% sum fee to both parties collectively. Put this on top of the 1.5(ideal)-3.9%(actual) fee exacted upon the markets by the maintenace of the BTC network, and we have a total of 3-5.9% overall cost to do business in BTC.

Getting expensive.

Would love to hear any and all responses. Thanks for your time.

** You can calculate this fee by taking daily bitcoins released (3600) and dividing it by the total daily volume in BTC. See this chart:
https://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per-transaction-percent