imo, most 'above board' businesses won't accept monero payments.

they have to bend over backwards to the state - commercial law, tax law, aml procedures with commercial banks. If they lose their business bank account they're done so they are cautious actors. think how slow shops are to adopt new payments technology compared to say internet based payments.

those shops are to an extent part of the state apparatus as they are 'permitted'.

as monero is, to an extent, money, you can use it to transact in as far as you can convince the other party to accept it - barter. barter works a lot better with individuals, and within communities than it does with formal business. however, monero is not physically limited, like gold, butter or bullets, monero is infinitely transactable around the globe at high speed. So it is furthermore suited to the aforementioned internet based payments services. its anonymity is not a problem when you have the tech on hand, wallets, escrow services etc. so that's where it is best suited to help.

the perspective of wanting more 'real-world applications' is, in my opinion, a diversion. those shops stuck in the fiat system are passé and monero is a new technology. it's not up to monero to try and fit into a bank card, although that can be useful (and possible with iterations of cakepay) but it's up to monero to blaze a new trail for the cypherpunk ideology. to be anonymous digital money that is fungible. if you have that, it is a unique and novel value proposition that new economies can be built on.

tl;dr monero doesn't need commercial adoption.