I've been for cryptocurrencies from when I first heard about it and got involved back in 2013. There are some pros to having Bitcoin as the future method of payment however there are some cons too.
It would be interesting to see why you think Bitcoin (or other cryptocurrencies) will surpass traditional methods of payment (Cards, Bank transfers, payment gateways etc.). Or if you think they have no future please share why.
Some of my concerns: - Ever since a few people have made a fortune from the massive spike in prices, it's attracted a lot of traders and day traders. Not a bad thins but it's clear to me that easily 90% of cryptocurrency users are just traders with no intensions of using the currencies. Hence the rise in a lot of exchanges (a lot of which look the same).
- All it takes is 51%. Although for a coin such as BTC would be very expensive to attack the network it's still possible.
Here's my insane scenario:
100 top banks from across the world don't like the threat BTC has on their business so they all join together to buy compute power, take over the network and cause havoc. I estimate it would cost around $2,000,000,000 (2 Billion USD). This is very expensive but what's $20,000,000 (20 million USD) to a top bank? That's an investment to help protect their business. - Speed: BTC is known to be slow to confirm a single transaction (approx 10 mins). ETH is faster (approx 15 seconds). I believe (correct me if i'm wrong) that if you cut down block times it slowly starts to make a decentralised system more centralised.
Food for thought..
It is too early to come into any conclusions now. At the moment you cannot compare Bitcoin with big payment processors like banks. Still a lot of development have been going on. With the recent development of lightning network you can now send a small amount like 1 Satoshi. Earlier it was not possible.
Banking system did not evolve within a decade it took time to create such a massive infrastructure. By the way you still cannot send small amount through banking payment system but, you can now by using Bitcoin lightning network.
These features make Bitcoin system more reliable over traditional ways of payments. As you said that it can be used for making even smaller payments, it is more secure, easily used and highly benefited. The present banking systems are not liked by the nations because of the taxes also, their working and the centralized nature of them , this involve third parties in their payments.