Does anyone know whether GNU Taler is involved in any way with these proposals? I feel like they'd be the natural people to work on anonymity. Looking at their website, I see that they've at least commented on them:
I think the main benefit is that all a lemonade stand or späti or what-have-you needs to start selling something digitally is a qr code someone can scan.
No that's not how it works. Only the seller needs to install the app. Sumup works with regular contactless cards, phones, watches etc. If you want contact chip cards also you can buy a reader for 25€.
The worse is that the amount of fee that will be requested will not be based on the technical cost of the operation, but for sure they will be there to remunerate "banks" that should not be needed anymore but that will still want to have their part of the cake.
And globally their have the bargaining power because indirectly their are the gang that are in command of the banking regulators in the end...
No fees for small transactions also means that merchants will be more willing to accept those form of payment, they have to accept but also not so happy to do so at the moment because of the fees eating on their margins.
Why do I have to pay to pay? For any transaction size? I'm already taxed for earning the money. I'm already taxed on goods I spend it on. And now I need to be taxed again every time I want to be taxed again on already taxed money?
The biggest problem for adoption of digital payment in everyday lives is, that for token payments the transaction fees are to high.
In case of 0.5€ for using a toilet the fixed transaction costs can be up to 0.25 €, if the entity processing your payment is using stripe or a similar business.
