Almost every invention is going to have prior steppingstones as a basis, as well as an array of discarder preambles that ended-up nowhere. 

I’ve skimmed through the first patent, and what it addresses is to facilitate fiat payments in a moment in time when online purchasing transactions basically resorted to payments through debit/credit cards with a high TX fee. It does not question the centralized fiat systems in any way, although it does consider centralized card payment systems a potential weakness (only from a technical standpoint though).

The proposal introduces the "electronic purse", which preloads/loads money off the users account through the FSP, and lets the user pay from it, possibly returning balance to the bank account if balance remains unspent for some time. If a way, the purse seems to resemble an electronic giftcard or with a big leap of imagination, a sort of embryonic
look-alike LN wallet (TXs settlements with central bank account seem to be unsynchronized, but perhaps I didn’t quite get the procedure in full here).