Its a chicken and egs scenario and that makes it difficult, for sure. But they may use it initially for sending money to friends and family, especially with gateways being launched. Hopefully some online shops will start accepting it before too long, and new options such as recurring payments will help with that as will the referral program if those shops think Bitshares may appeal to their customers because they can get paid for introducing them. It will be a slow process at first but it will accelerate as more customers bring more shops on board and more shops introduce more new customers.
The referral program encourages both merchant and user adoption. Merchants integrate bitusd and refer users to the platform (getting paid for doing so). To achieve this dynamic, you must first financially incentivise the merchant to recommend bitusd as a payment option in the first place.
Take porn for example. Porn merchants are known for having to pay outrageous fees (10 - 20 percent). They won't recommend bitcoin because a) it's too volatile and b) recurring payments are impossible. Bitusd offers an alternative that will make them money on referrals, doesn't take 10 - 20 percent, is stable and allows recurring payments. That's a solid sell
assuming easy on/off ramps.
Another example is Latin America where demand for USD is high but supply is low. With a referral program, you'll start getting organic user adoption there.
BitShares is not an alternative to PayPal and it won't be for quite some time.