Maybe I’m missing something, but the above comment reminds me of the blockchain naïveté of 10 years ago. I don’t mean to be dismissive; I’m suspending disbelief long enough to ask what you mean in detail.

But it is a permanent and final transfer, no easy charge backs like with a credit card, or fraud protection from debit cards.

You have to know which account you are paying into (sort code and account number), which is the main part of what Visa/Mastercard do. They are the layer in front of the bank account which means customers don't have to send money directly to an account.

I suppose now everyone has a smart phone it would be easier to hook up something like Faster Payments in a user friendly way with an app and a QR code/NFC reader that the merchant has. But Visa/Mastercard are entrenched obviously.

I think the above is quite wrong (with moderate confidence). Is the above claim consistent with survey data? It is my understanding that:

1. companies care a lot about risk reduction. This includes protection from chargebacks.

2. companies benefit when customers have credit: it enables more spending and can smooth out ups and downs in individual purchasing ability

3. Yes, quick transfers matter, but not in isolation from the above two.

There is, it's a layer-2 on Ethereum called zkSync. It's not totally satisfactory (the company that makes it can steal your money, centralized sequencer, etc), but it's pretty mature and works quite well. To replace Visa you want high throughput and low latency and zk-rollups like zkSync can provide both. (There are other options too, like Starknet, but AFAIK zkSync is the most mature.)

Still faith in magic on HN