Google probably accepts the most forms of payment of any single company in the world (just a guess), but which forms of payment are accepted on any given product under Google will vary. For example, Adwords[0] has the list of supported forms of payment by country. While in Play we things like Paypal, direct_carrier_billing, and gift cards.
I have no clue what the News Initiative is supporting, but I could guess it will be credit/debit cards from around the world.
Google has built a LOT of payments projects. Some have definitely failed, but there are many that you don't notice because it will be supporting specific flows in specific countries or products.
And not a single one of them supports SEPA payments.
I had to get a CC just for the Google Play Developer fee.
CCs are very uncommon in Germany, everything – including Amazon.de – supports SEPA payments.
But Google does not.
So, the "Google probably accepts the most forms of payment of any single company in the world (just a guess)" statement may be technically true, but it doesn’t help at all.
And Google has managed to fuck up every payment solution they’ve built yet.