I believe they do require this of large companies; it's been a while, but IIRC Netflix and Disney+ both allow you to sign up for the service in the app. The HBO app does, too.

You can log in with an existing account, but I thought the requirement was that you need to give a user the ability to sign up for a paid service account in app, and that signup needs to bill through Apple.

It's a moneymaker, no doubt; as a consumer, though, I appreciate not having to hand over credit card details to a random service I'm trying out for a month.