This is a pretty big deal. Stripe is already processing billions of transactions. Additionally Stripe already has the relationship with merchants that other L1's lack along with the payment network expertise.

If Stripe’s closed-loop system scales, banks and card networks could lose significant transaction volume, fees and even merchant relationships. Merchants and customers win with lower transaction fees. This marks a very credible and large-scale effort yet to challenge the Visa and Mastercard duopoly.

Obviously not perfect and other questionable projects have stained blockchains reputation but it is a net win, no?

What is blockchains reputation and who cares?

Blockchain is used as an umbrella term to lump useless systems like this and ripple into the same category as actual decrentralized cryptocurrencies.