I suspect that it will lose out against the Digital Euro.
I do think that GNU Taler is the better technical solution as the blind signatures and online model require less trust in the platform, while the Digital Euro requires untamperable hardware enclaves. So in an ideal world we would all standardize on GNU Taler and be happy.
Unfortunately, anything related to money is probably the place where trust paranoia is the least useful. In fact, widespread use of the Digital Euro will probably be the best proof for the security of the available hardware enclaves, similar to how Bitcoin is proof that SHA-2 is currently secure. Otherwise, somebody would make bank from counterfeiting in the few moments before the system crashes down.
The digital Euro has the real benefit to allow offline transactions.
Both Digital Euro and GNU Taler have the psychological burden that you have to exchange "real money" for some kind of digital "monopoly money" which can get lost with no way to re-imburse you. (Which is the same as would happen with literal cash, but nobody will care about that.)
(Which is why I actually think both "digital cash" solutions will die out, with GNU Taler fading into obscurity, and Digital Euro being kept on life support as it is literally legal tender. And we will eventually all just be using Wero, which is just SEPA wire transfers in a trench coat)
I was laughing about the "Wero, which is just SEPA wire transfers in a trench coat", but then I checked the technicalities of Bizum (the similar system in Spain that's also integrating with Wero) and Wero...
Bizum says on their site "...so our tech is based on SEPA transfers, linking a phone number with a Spanish IBAN so we're ready for Europe wide deployment", and Wero says "It runs on the SEPA Instant standard..."
So yes, it really is SEPA on a phone number trench coat.
Not wrong, just funny! I don't like the dependency on the bank (that could have, or not, Wero/Bizum support integrated) but I never though it was "just" a SEPA process.
> Both Digital Euro and GNU Taler have the psychological burden that you have to exchange "real money" for some kind of digital "monopoly money"
Isn't the idea behind the digital euro the exact opposite? That the money you see on your conventional bank account is famously not real (as the bank goes bankrupt if everyone tries to withdraw), while the money you have in the form of digital euro is real money, the way cash is?
I am just offering personal opinion and looking into my crystal ball.
You are correct on the facts. The idea is precisely to have a digital cash equivalent, in fact it will even be tracked as part of M1.
I just don't think that people will treat it like tangible cash, and instead assume it to have the same standards of loss prevention that they have with other digital payment methods. You don't lose your bank account if you lose your phone or your debit card, and people will act surprised when they find out that for the D€ this does not apply.
I predict there will be some sentimental news stories about those "victims" of the D€ quickly after the introduction, and it will take quite some time until there is some trust in the public, if ever. And then you get the chicken-egg problem, if nobody wants to use it, nobody will establish the infrastructure, so nobody will even be able to use it.
Well, at least Wero is already working in a bunch of countries...
It's a bit different, as Digital Euro will be a bit more "digital cash" and allow offline payments, and, IIRC, won't depend on your bank.
The bad part about Wero is, at least in some countries, it depends on your bank, and you need that banks app (and the bank needs to support it). I'm on Bizum, that's a similar system on Spain that's being joined to the Wero system (they started the partnership in February or so, but I don't know the progress of it or when will it be joined).
The Digital Euro is intentionally designed to be as close to cash as possible.
This is also why GNU Taler was not a viable candidate from the start (lacks offline transactions). You can also acquire and have Digital Euros without having a bank account.
Wero is explicitly a system backed by the private banking system, if you do not have a bank account, you cannot participate.
> Both Digital Euro and GNU Taler have the psychological burden that you have to exchange "real money" for some kind of digital "monopoly money" which can get lost with no way to re-imburse you.
With my short chat a while ago with GNU Taler's project maintainer was that for a rollout of Taler one would need an EMI (Electronic Money Issuance (?)) license. Besides the capital requirements to hold such a license there are rules to prevent/punish lack of deposit safety.
In short, it's not comparable to cryptocurrency "trust me bro" attitude, but it also makes it hard for new startups to get seed funded to start their own Taler exchange and payments integration.
I would strongly assume that the EMI license is about something different and does not enforce that your digital cash needs to be re-imbursable if you lost it.
There is already precedent of cash cards like GeldKarte which also were non-reimbursable if you lost the physical card, so at least BaFin would allow something like that, but I don't know if that predated the EMI rules.
Are you sure they didn't just mean the requirement that they have to keep the capital around (at least in significant parts) to cash out any tokens they emit?
If only I'd have 350k euros lying around to pursue this route, and have clear answers :)
But from what I gather (and my memory might be a bit fuzzy) on one hand you have to safe-keep the deposits from your operating capital in full to allow redeeming them back, while at the same time you have to hold those funds in "classical" banks. In which case, I would assume, they would fall within the same guaranteed 100k deposit safety which is across the EU. However the devil is in the details, if for example you can open a bank account for each individual user, or you're holding all deposits in a single grouped account.
As an end-user if you lose the funds that would be no different to losing your wallet, and a mechanism like this shouldn't be seen as a separate "bank account". With SEPA instant payments you would top it up as an additional wallet when you need to make payments and you don't have enough funds in your account.
I was only talking about the case that your funds can get lots if you lose your device. Because the tokens work like cash and cannot be revoked and reimbursed. Not about redemption from token back to euros.
I'm a happy GLS Bank customer, and I've just learned about its involvement in Taler. Pretty awesome.
Europe desperately needs its own digital payment solutions to reduce its dependence on US companies and its exposure to sanctions that could target EU citizens if the president has a bad day.
GLS is also on board with Wero, which, unfortunately, hasn't seen big adoption yet.
No they are not? You might be thinking of cheque-style payments (recipient pulls, with proof of the sender's authorisation) versus giro-style payments (sender pushes, with their own authorisation). The latter are obviously much more secure.
Do you pay your groceries with SEPA instant transfers?
Merchants can't just slap a QR code with their banking details on their website or cash registers. Wero offers a convenient layer on top of SEPA transfers, and you can argue EPC QR codes are already enough (though most people would disagree).
Additionally, Wero provides a full payment solution that's integrated with many third party processors, and is basically an evolution of Payconiq and iDEAL. Sure, it does use SEPA rails, but there's a lot more to it. And that's the part that will need to interoperate with more than a dozen mobile wallets in Europe, inside and outside the Eurozone.
That's why it's built on SEPA instant that is written into EU law, requiring 10 second transfer times, and the banks have incentives to support these things (they often own it, but also because it creates lock-in effects of focusing business in one bank).
In Poland everyone uses Blik, recently even Revolut (a popular pan-EU neobank) started supporting it for transactions in Poland. It’s trusted, available for 10+y and generally a successful project.
I don’t think it ever tried expanding outside of Poland though.
When it comes to Wero—I’m not sure. My bank recently replaced “payconiq” with it, and I don’t see any benefits or new features and the app seems amateurish.
I guess the single market is not really “single” in the US sense.
banks have two ways to offer non-iDeal Wero: Either in their own app, or via the Wero app.
I think it's super interesting to see how Wero connects all the separate instant payment schemes. It launched in Germany and France, replacing giropay in Germany. Now it first rebrands iDeal as iDeal|Wero, and plans to replace it with regular Wero. And in Poland, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Italy, they don't push the Wero brand or technology, but instead they build interoperability with the local systems.
Like someone else who made the "SEPA in trenchcoat" comment, it's all built on tying phonenumbers (universally available and easily connectible) to bank accounts and relying on SEPA instant for the money.
The only thing to make sure is that QR-codes,etc that are often tied to apps will be supported for routing/connecting between different apps.
Like the Swedish Swish app when asking for money produces a QR-code that says, A+(my-phone-number) , if that's universally recognized by the apps as an ask-request then an Italian app scanning my QR code will be prompted send money and the Italian system will query the Swedish counterparts what account is registered to that phone and then just send the money over SEPA when the request finishes.
Most banks integrate Wero into their online banking app, but some (e.g. mine) use the dedicated app for Wero (It's just called wero on google play and iOS). You still sign up with your bank account though.
The critical feature that Wero needs is adding money to your account balance via SEPA instant or credit card. That way users without participating bank accounts can join.
> I guess the single market is not really “single” in the US sense.
AFAIK due to SEPA we are already much better integrated. And with SEPA URLs (QR or NFC) plus instant transactions we already have all we need deployed EU wide. IMO the European banks are just over engineering everything.
The real benefit is "one to rule them all". It's so much more useful to have one single network that everybody uses even if the service doesn't have all the bells and whistles, than it is to have to use a patchwork of 1000 different networks even if they're stuffed with fancy features.
Which is 99.9% of the users and probably not a blocker for main stream adoption especially if it’s not the only way to pay (Bank transfer, cash etc all still works).
Edge case or not, I do consider a dependency on user-hostile proprietary software owned and controlled by foreign companies a serious problem by nature. Most people not caring doesn’t make it any better.
I do think that GNU Taler is the better technical solution as the blind signatures and online model require less trust in the platform, while the Digital Euro requires untamperable hardware enclaves. So in an ideal world we would all standardize on GNU Taler and be happy.
Unfortunately, anything related to money is probably the place where trust paranoia is the least useful. In fact, widespread use of the Digital Euro will probably be the best proof for the security of the available hardware enclaves, similar to how Bitcoin is proof that SHA-2 is currently secure. Otherwise, somebody would make bank from counterfeiting in the few moments before the system crashes down.
The digital Euro has the real benefit to allow offline transactions. Both Digital Euro and GNU Taler have the psychological burden that you have to exchange "real money" for some kind of digital "monopoly money" which can get lost with no way to re-imburse you. (Which is the same as would happen with literal cash, but nobody will care about that.)
(Which is why I actually think both "digital cash" solutions will die out, with GNU Taler fading into obscurity, and Digital Euro being kept on life support as it is literally legal tender. And we will eventually all just be using Wero, which is just SEPA wire transfers in a trench coat)