UI automation is necessary for accessibility

And to be clear: I can't buy an eSIM with Venmo - cause I can't access Venmo. Even if I have access to something like PayPal, many other people do not and it could well be that the person/entity I want to make a financial transaction with does not have access.

For a large chunk of the world, it is very difficult to conclude financial transactions with them, via the "retail friendly" way - and the methods available are not suitable for micro-payments (and are not recoverable either!). For a certain section of the world there is no available method.

*Other* than the distributed Internet money methods - those work well. And the friction of the other methods is such that even many "normal users" will be willing to overcome the UI-overheads. We /could/ easily have the retail friendly UIs, and integration with the types of entities you list, if not for the high regulatory friction.

So it's all social, as far as I'm concerned.