Totally agree, payment methods are available for 99.99% of the customers, why hide it from them? I'd rather have a fraction of my customers refused at checkout than 99.99% of my customers frustrated and confused.
This is the bare minimum, at least have a coherent message. As I don't want to pay 159$ for a custom module right now I changed my message on my store to:
"We accept Visa, Mastercard and Paypal. Please fill in your shipping details on step 1 above to proceed."