There's no need to force anyone into ecash. It is opt-in technology.

Example: a merchant could receive ecash via a physical terminal and NFC, or in a web checkout and by default, always redeem the payment into their self-cusrodial Lighrning wallet. They don't need to trust the mint. They receive ecash and redeem the Bitcoin, and only then they sell the apple.

It's the paying user who benefits from ecash the most: they can make small, reliable, offline, privacy-preserving payments with all the other benefits of ecash.