Yeah. Your point about spending limits is a very good one, maybe an interesting area for research. Not being able to spend specific chunks of your balance is a limitation (though the model of discrete denominations is also problematic, in other ways!). Didn't people try to address that with cosigning for onchain? Could we do that for LN? Have an agent that cosigns your channel updates with ecdsa 2pc or musig when we finally get taproot ln (umm nested musig blah blah).

The scenario that seems really difficult is: customer arrives in new town/region and needs Internet access at a 'tienda' (or bodega to use the US vernacular!).

I think nontech answers like fd0's : nostr:nevent1qqsfkm5vamze9mnqdpnuf6ykehegl8mc85d8p9dwe9yu48ls62d2cwgpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsygrxsyng4nj8fr2p5n8uc8nyqphmjddmcdvhs2eajcglvn23ce6jmypsgqqqqqqsz5vzal

.. are more likely to be what is chosen; though i think physical cards representing LN funds is a nice idea too, just that spendinglimit problem to fix ... If we want people to pay with tokens to bootstrap, the unfortunate reality is they'll tend to use the tokens of the strongest mafia in their jurisdiction (that's what makes bitcoin a little bit magical, it isn't a token ultimately redeemable with some authority). 

 Yea, you can do multisig channels (indeed nested musig) for lightning (well, 66%+1, not 50%+1, sadly), but you’re still doing the “I communicate with some third party over your internet before I pay you for it”.

But, yeah just giving people a tiny bit of internet works fine mostly. Even airplane WiFi with credit cards lets you access DNS before you buy…