Hello,
It's good to know that you have found an alternative.
About that modification of behavior ; it was something required in HikaShop in order to avoid a huge number of issues we faced in the support.
Depending the checkout workflow, the organisation of the blocks, etc ; the customer had to confirm several times a same step in order to validate the payment method (or shipping method choice).
So we had to change some elements to propose a more "fluid" workflow.
Now we still have some ideas of improvements for HikaShop and the checkout ; and with custom plugins it is possible to change the default payment & shipping selection. The idea behind it is to provide a very flexible system with no frustration for the customer when he want to checkout.
Regards,
Jerome - Obsidev.com
HikaMarket & HikaSerial developer / HikaShop core dev team.
Also helping the HikaShop support team when having some time or couldn't sleep.
By the way, do not send me private message, use the "contact us" form instead.