Steem as a currency system has the benefit of being 'inflationary' (9.75% gets added every year). This is partly what enables the whole system of rewards and SMTs as we know them.
People are used to getting rewarded when they use their credit cards in fiat currency (1%, 2%, sometimes 4% of the value of the purchase and/or airmiles).
They get rewarded largely from the pool of money that merchants are charged by credit card companies to use their credit systems (banks also benefit). Merchants don't like paying these fees (to VISA, for example).
A Steem-based credit card could reward credit card holders in Steem just for using their card, and merchants wouldn't have to pay anything. The merchants would simply get paid in their fiat currency by the Bank of Steem.
Internationally there would be no exchange fees between fiat currencies and that would be another benefit.
And consumers would get their bill in Steem and they'd have to pay it in Steem and they'd be charged interest in Steem too. Or maybe they could have the option of paying it in Steem or the currency of their home country... maybe a one-button 'convert to Steem' function would be available in the online accounts of the 'Bank of Steem'.
And the Bank of Steem would also be the bank that backs up all the credit... a credit business that mirrors the existing systems already in place.
...Of course, credit fraud would be irreversible because of the blockchain (but isn't it pretty much already?) ... and someone has to pay for fraud... (I don't know all the ins and outs of how the credit system works, but somehow it does right now, and theoretically there are solutions).
What you'd need is for all the existing payment systems to somehow accept an integration from the Bank of Steem that would channel transactions with Steem cards effortlessly onto the blockchain (so you wouldn't need new hardware), and you'd need the individual cardholders to accept full responsibility for fraudulent use of their card (so you wouldn't need to collect payments from merchants to pay for this (or... when the blockchain issues a reward for use of the card, have some go to the account holder and some go into a pot to cover these sorts of expenses).
Probably there are a bunch of reasons why this would be more complicated than what I've laid out here.
Maybe better to just start with a Steem debit card, with Steem rewards for cardholders.
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