"Ripple has been set up to eventually disappear like a fiat currency over time." Not sure I follow this. All fiat currency around today is inflationary and Ripple designed XRP to be deflationary. There are transaction fees, the lowest being 0.00001XRP and yes some XRP is burned during each transaction. The burn rate however is nothing to be alarmed about, it would take thousands of years to burn through the XRP token supply so there will be no need to create more. XRP isn't a banks token, it's a token that they feel comfortable using. If bitcoin was as fast and cheap they could use that. Down the road when XRP is being used to move all sorts of assets currencies and securities between networks, banks won't be the only ones using it.
I didn't like banks for a while either until I figured out what about the monetary system I actually didn't like. Debt-based currency and fractional reserve lending. Take those two things away from banks and they become safe places to store your wealth and take out loans.