Really? Since money is required (for anyone who isn't a 'miner') to acquire Bitcoin, how is it supposed to accomplish that?

That leads to the other basic question: why use money to 'purchase' Bitcoin (convert money to equivalent Bitcoin at some rate of exchange) in order to make purchases? For purchasers, the cost of the transaction itself for using a card, such as a credit card or a debit card, is zero. For all those other transactional services, there is no requirement to convert the money a person has into some other at some rate of exchange for domestic transactions.

If the point that Bitcoin could replace all those other transactional facilitators for all international transactions, that is something well shy of the claims made here. Even then, wouldn't it depend on the (current) price of conversion to Bitcoin vs. other costs?