After six months of development, the GNU Project presented a free electronic payment system GNU Taler 1.1. The platform is recognized as ready for the implementation of working payment services and can already be legally used for selling goods in Switzerland. Enterprises wishing to set up payment for sales using GNU Taler simply need to have an account in any Swiss bank and run the backend provided by the platform for organizing sales.
The GNU Taler code is written in C and distributed under the AGPLv3 and LGPLv3 licenses.
It includes basic components that allow you to organize the work of a bank, exchange point, trading platform, wallet and auditor. The system allows sellers to be identified for tax reporting, but provides anonymity for buyers. The development is funded by grants from the European Commission and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).
The GNU Taler payment system is not tied to its own cryptocurrency and works with existing currencies such as dollars, euros and bitcoins. Support for new currencies is carried out through a link to a bank, which acts as a financial guarantor of the transactions performed. The project promotes a business model based on exchange transactions – money from traditional payment systems such as BitCoin, Mastercard, SEPA, Visa, ACH and SWIFT is converted into anonymous electronic money in the same currency. The user can transfer electronic money to sellers, who can then exchange it back into real money at the exchange point.
Already completed transactions in GNU Taler remain reliable even if the private keys of clients, sellers and exchange points are leaked – the database format allows you to verify all completed transactions and confirm their consistency. Confirmation of payment for sellers is a cryptographic proof of the transfer within the framework of the contract concluded with the client and a cryptographically signed confirmation of the availability of funds at the exchange point. The system does not allow you to find out where the client spends the money, but makes it possible to track the receipt of funds to the recipient, while maintaining the anonymity of the sender. This approach solves the problems with tax audits inherent in BitCoin.
To organize the work of a point of sale, manage payments and service orders, is provided an application for the Android platform, optimized for paying customers in a restaurant. There is a plugin for integrating the launched payment service with the platform for creating online stores WooCommerce, as well as plugin for the ticket sales platform Pretix.
In the new version:
- Added an option for self-provisioning of the backend merchant, which provides payments and setting up orders at points of sale.