I agree that it is an attractive feature, but I think that there may be other ways for NXT users to accomplish instant point of purchase transactions without the network being able to accomplish instant transactions. Unless there is another reason for needing the network to have these types of transaction speeds, Point of purchase transaction speed could possibly be accomplished by other means.
For example, prepaid credit cards. If it were possible to load a prepaid credit card from a NXT account and use the card at point of purchase, there would be the one loading transaction that may take a while, but he point of purchase transactions would be like credit card transactions.
If point of purchase is the only reason for needing high speed transactions, there may be more efficient solutions than trying to speed up network transactions.
It really boils down to who the target is when it comes to marketing. The Ripple approach is more geared toward the individual user; which can be an expensive and time consuming approach. By taking the approach of marketing to businesses (like credit card/ ach providers) it gives the business some of the workload in spreading the usage of their product. Some may argue that this marketing strategy is contrary to decentralization, But businesses would have the same desire for a decentralized platform to engage in business as individuals do.
If you want volume the vast majority of transactions are still cash and instant - these are C2B - Customer to Business... and i'm talking about the 'world as a whole' not the 'western world'.
If you want to play in this space you need to be instant, card transactions are not 'instant' - the are authorised, the transaction is accepted with ZERO confirmations but based on a validity check - it requires one confirmation from the card issuer and this is done later.. There is also a complex liability model because of this and that is one reason why fee's are so high. BTW this is also true of pre-pay cards.
Prepay cards exist for FIAT, people will only use them for NXT if there is a reason, why not use FIAT. Card Companies have a strangle hold with fee's on the merchants, to get them to use you - you have to give them an alternative - why are webisites accepting bitcoin - because they are crypto enthusiasts all of a sudden - 'No' they are using it as a way to avoid paying higher card charges and a threat to get the card companies to lower their charges.
If you use existing pre-pay card networks then you pay their fees?? It costs millions in POS infrastructure to roll out your own.
To combat card companies you will see mobile payments moving into this space more and more, there is no crypto capable of 'instant transactions' yet that I have seen. The holy grail is to confirm the transaction end2end between the payer and payee accounts.
Like I posted earlier - Instant is NOT needed for everything, and we should have some kind of slow, faster, instant type of transactions.
.
