This is interesting. This is likely very positive. I do not *think* they would be doing this if they were not bought into the ecosystem philosophically. In other words if Bitcoin is just a precursor to PalCoin that's one thing... and I do not doubt PalCoin is likely.
I think this smells. They have known about Bitcoin and other crypto companies since 2012/2013. They could have bought any number of them then for cheap, and enabled crypto payments a long time ago.
So why now?
The likely culprit is that their profits are falling, and they're looking for another way to lock in users into their payment services platform. And also to scoop 0.5% on every crypto buy/sell. It is all greed driven, that is all.