@reiver

You wrote:

Or, a parent giving money to their child.

On a tangent: #Taler not only supports P2P payments, but offers a privacy-preserving mechanism for age-restriction, built-in into the coins, as well.

Parents can give their children coins that are usable only for items up to - say - 12. The proof of the requirement doesn't reveal the actual age of the payer.

See our paper: https://www.taler.net/papers/esorics2022-age-restriction.pdf

@reiver

The general rule in #Taler is: who pays is guaranteed to stay anonymous and who receives is guaranteed to be known to the exchange. This is true for normal payments and also for P2P payments.

Because legally, receiving money is a form of income, potentially taxable, the exchange requires a KYC process performed once by the receiver of the money.

In Switzerland, the KYC process with taler-ops.ch only involves a Swiss mobile phone number, able to receive a code.

@reiver

#Taler does offer peer-to-peer payments, when the corresponding exchange support that's feature. F.e. in Switzerland you can pay and p2p with Taler, see https://taler-ops.ch/en/users-android.html.

See also the REST-API for it: https://docs.taler.net/core/api-exchange.html#wallet-to-wallet-transfers

@WuMing2

I agree with your statement about surveillance that comes along with current technology and business models.

This is why #Taler has been invented in the first place, to provide an option to exit out of surveillance, specifically in the realm of payments. Being an open protocol ( #Taler ) and being implemented as free software ( #GNUTaler ), it is a genuine alternative to existing digital payment schemes.

Of course, it is not an isolated solution to the challenge of modern surveillance, but part of a broader strategy for digital sovereignty of the individual. We see the Zeitgeist already change and more people adopt less intrusive alternatives and sometimes decentralized services, like mastodon, to enshittified services.

When #Taler will enjoy broader adoption for fiat currencies via supporting banks etc., people and businesses will have a true privacy-preserving yet legally compliant alternative for digital payments, too.

Its openness will allow the development of wallets for all sorts of hardware, software environments and specific user needs, and therefore be significant part of the goal of achieving digital sovereignty of the individual.

Being a digital payment system, it might also become a central part in the funding of free and open source software.

I think this is enough enthusiasm for a Saturday noon.

@WuMing2

On top of better privacy, #Taler is not account based, and therefore the threat model is very different. All account based systems, including TIPS, suffer from identity theft, loss of credentials, unauthorized access to accounts etc.

This is not possible in Taler: You withdraw coins directly onto your wallet. They are then in your custody. No account, no login, no danger of credentials getting stolen.

Even if you have not made a backup of your wallet and - say - you loose your mobile phone, then only the amount left in the wallet is lost. No need to "lock an account" or "credit card".