UI automation is necessary for accessibility

Nothing would stop a PayPal like entity acting as a gateway to whatever underlying micro-payment system. If a PayPal like frontend is what is needed for "normal" users, nothing technical stops that.

The fundamental issue, as you already stated, is that the blocker is a social issue. Though, it's just /not/ the one you stated. Rather, the reason we can't have a global, ubiquitous, universal access, distributed micro-payments systems is the same reason that the existing PayPals, Venmos, etc., can't act as a gateway to such a system: The governments of the world do not want it - they only want something they can control.

And so long as there are different and unaligned blocks of states in the world, we can never have that global, ubiquitous, universal access system.

And even if all were aligned, they would not allow us to have a /private/ system, and quite probably also not a universal-access system.

However, at the technical level, the micro-payments system(s) are built and are in-use. I wish LWN would integrate something with the accounts system, so I could add "Pay for LWN subscription" to my list of digital stuff I can pay for with distributed Internet money.