The card companies, banks and payment processors cooperate together to charge a good chunk of fees both to cover the cost of fraud and to protect against it. But can bitcoin offer better, or at the very least lower-cost, fraud protection for merchants and consumers?

     It's almost essential today for merchants to accept credit or debit cards. Indeed, it is often the only form of payment in a customer's wallet. However, in exchange for accepting cards, merchants must pay for a number of services that they may not need or want as part of the blanket fees charged by payment processors.

      There are even some examples where merchants offer customers a discount in exchange for paying in cash, such as gas stations in the US, which often advertise a cheaper price to customers using physical money.

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     A cashless society is still a long way off, but automated machines that turn traditional money into virtual currency are cropping up across the globe. The trend has come to New York - Flat 128, a retailer that sells British jewelry and accessories in the West Village, is home to the first such machine in Manhattan and is becoming a destination for bitcoin enthusiasts.

     Yet this new bitcoin ATM is only a means for users to deposit cash and convert it to bitcoins for their accounts; It doesn't currently have the ability to make withdrawals.

     Wagepoint, an HR tech company specializing in online payroll software for small businesses, has launched the first bitcoin payroll solution to be offered in all 50 states and U.S. territories for small- and medium-sized businesses.

     In partnership with Buttercoin, a bitcoin trading platform backed by Google Ventures, Wagepoint enables businesses to link employees' bitcoin wallets as a second or third priority deposit. Employees can allocate the dollar amount or percentage of net pay they want converted into bitcoin.

     "Wagepoint is constantly looking to innovate and push the envelope when it comes to payroll software so we can give our customers and their employees the best online payroll experience," said Shrad Rao, CEO of Wagepoint. "Adding a bitcoin feature was a natural next step -- it's an exciting currency that is rapidly growing. It will undoubtedly change the way consumers make payments, and we are right at the forefront to help employers get this currency in employees' hands."

     "By partnering with Wagepoint, we're helping make Bitcoin payroll easy," said Cedric Dahl, CEO of Buttercoin.

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     The peer-to-peer decentralized digital currency bitcoin's popularity has dramatically soared to new heights this past year. From the United States to Canada, from Europe to Asian, the virtual currency has become an accepted payment method or form of money for merchants and freelancers, retailers and employees.

     Across the pond in Europe, bitcoin has transformed the market landscape. This year, European merchants have processed approximately 28 million euros in bitcoin payments, compared to the minuscule 1.4 million euros for the same time last year. This is a 1,900 percent increase in year-over-year growth.

     In the past three months, more than 2,500 merchants have tapped the services of BitPay, a bitcoin payments processor, and it now maintains a European client base of about 11,000. The highest adoption rates among European countries include Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and some of the most notable European clients consist of Air Baltic, Easy Hotel, Shapiro, Takeaway.com and many more.

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