Did you read the webpage? BitPay is a payment processor. They mention the increase in total BTC transactions but it focuses on their growth as a payment processor
They're converting Bitcoins to USD and back again, which is HFT activity. People are not using it to make payments to people but converting it to/from other currencies, which is speculative and not currency behavior.
Bitpay is a payment processor, they receive bitcoin on behalf of a store, and then give the store USD or EURO or whatever. When Bitpay says their activity has gone up, that means more bitcoin is being used to pay for real goods, services, etc.
Please go back and read the article, or just look at their homepage...
Neither of those two articles mention bitpay. Did you reply to the right comment?