Payment processors can play a good role in increasing bitcoin adoption, but the key feature of Bitcoin is to cut out the middle men in transfer of value. If you replace a bank by a payment processor, it really doesn't help.
You can't really blame merchants to accept Bitcoin through a payment processor (or whatever other entity) due to the volatility that Bitcoin is known for. They can't afford accepting Bitcoin directly, where they sell something for $1000 where after that the value of this transaction sinks to $920 for example. You could say that they should keep holding their coins till the price goes up again, but it doesn't work like that for merchants. Other than that, I see these kind of articles pop up from time to time, but I never see any mention of statistics of usage. It would be nice to see whether or not Bitcoin as payment option gets used a lot, or just barely.