Some light self-promotion but also longer term thoughts:

A large part of the promise of crypto and stablecoins was to displace Visa and Mastercard rent-seeking. This didn't seem to happen. Most modern neobanks, our own included (https://peanut.me), actually seem to EMBRACE Visa and Mastercard. Almost all offer an actual Fiat card within their app, instead of boldly saying "No, pay with crypto, the future of money!"

This is somewhat disappointing in the short term, but longterm i believe it offers a clear transitory path to full decentralized money adoption. Already today we're seeing a growth in direct peer to peer payments in peanut, and merchants slowly starting to adopt it as well. I imagine the same is happening across the industry. In a competitive economy, the better currency (read: crypto, stablecoins) wins and eventually absorbs adoption.

my 2 cents

Crypto is in no way better money.

It’s slow and expensive and doesn’t scale.

The real answer is an alternative that relies on a centralised provider - or set of them - who use traditional databases and the like, but do things in a modern efficient way and don’t charge the same fees as the current card providers do.

The problem is that bitcoin (and similar) are so computationally intense to run, that the transaction cost is much higher than Visa's.

Furthermore, a currency needs a government (or similar kind of body) to manage its stability, by printing (and buying) money. Otherwise, we'll see wide fluctuations in value like what happens with Bitcoin.