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RomeoStevens comments on Bitcoins are not digital greenbacks - Less Wrong
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You vastly underestimate the importance of this. When you run a business with margins of 6%, 3% fees are cutting your profits in half.
growth has been ridiculously rapid. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade
Bitpay has 0.99% fees. Exchanging bitcoin at mtgox costs you 0.60% fees.
In total bitcoin doesn't allow free transfers.
"Saving money on fees" =/= "No fees"
That's a good point from a company's perspective. (Note, though, that if bitcoins ever became a serious threat, credit card companies could probably respond by lowering their fees.) From an individual's perspective, it's not very meaningful. And getting individuals to adopt bitcoin is going to be a bigger barrier, because there are more individuals than companies. Getting individuals to pay with bitcoin is even harder 'cause of deflation issues.
Given that bitcoin was introduced over four years ago, I think "ridiculously rapid" is an exaggeration.
Do you know of data on actual transactions completed with bitcoin, as opposed to merchant adoption or speculation?
Given that credit card companies are already cutting their effective margins (by offering a percentage of purchases as cash back to their customers, for the most direct example) to be competitive with each other, how much do you think they could afford to cut for a system that doesn't have centralized costs to subsidize?