I am not sure about the second part. This is not a regular text, it's a bunch of characters. It can be put in a square (with fixed width font) so that it is obvious it is intended to be scanned. 
Also you usually need to actively engage the scan functionality. No way to accidently scan anything.

I am also thinking about using some identicon logic to put some color scheme on the characters themselves, so that human comparison can become very easy.

BallLightning

bitcoin

Machine readable fonts instead of QR codes

Nice find. Would certainly be nice to obfuscate some of the QR overload of recent years. And it definitely feels like a stop-gap solution to future digital life.

Separate topic - part of the experience is improved because a QR is quite clearly distinguishable from our language or a picture or other means of communication. There are definitely use cases to hiding invoice QRs from plain sight, but I suspect any new standard would still need to be 'visible' so as to ensure backwards compatibility and to ensure people/machines are actively wishing to engage with it. Not accidentally triggering or actioning requests. Otherwise our lives would be DDOS'd with payment requests.