Sure, but they wouldn't get all the legal and regulatory bypass benefits of using cryptocurrency.
In some countries, regulators simply point to these companies and say "Ok, so you're driving people around for money thus you are a taxi? How would we not regulate you as a taxi?".
And this should apply for a bank or financial institution that tries to avoid banking regulations through technical means, no?
To have deployed some blockchain layer 1 nodes, it's actually quite similar than deploying a distributed database.
Nowadays, it's actually just easier to fork geth/reth or other engine, and just deploy it. There are so many doc and tooling that can then be reused.
Fancy validator selection sounds like the individual financial institutions are still responsible for managing and maintaining their nodes, which gives them a fair (as in balanced not fair as in a lot) amount of liability/responsibility/control.
A distributed database, afaik, while geographically distributed, entails more centralization of power/control.
"EVM-compatible, built on Reth" => they're essentially building a private Ethereum fork with a fancy validator selection process.
Couldn't they just get these benefits (predictable fees, fast settlement) by ... running a database between these financial institutions?
If Stripe controls the validator set (even indirectly), then ... just a distributed database with extra steps, no?