I believe it was because it has the power to revolutionize the world I mean It enables people all over the world to receive or send money money without needing to pay big amount of transaction fee and also nowadays you can even buy anything with bitcoin with just your smart phone you can book a flight or hotel , buy gadgets , load your network using bitcoin ! I believe that as many users use bitcoin and become much more popular every merchants may accept it as a payment system.
Bitcoin lends itself perfectly for that purpose, but banks and governments aren't sitting still without doing anything. It's also in their own benefit to get their own version of the blockchain developed, where they have all benefits of a regular blockchain, but where they remain in control over every aspect. It will be a centralized incentive. But if enough banks, businesses, governments, etc, choose to implement it correctly, then they can even challange Bitcoin as they can basically offer free and instant transactions. Bitcoiners won't be much sensitive to that, but the average joe is. They add value to it as unlike Bitcoin that doesn't have a central authority to take care of everything, their version will give them that safe feeling as the government sits on top of everything. But as it stands right now, it's pure speculation...