NGI TALER, Brussels, 2024-02-29T23:00:00Z
NGI TALER Pilot Reveals TALER ICH, a workspace for GNU Taler payment system deployment
TALER ICH is a forum for contributing to the integration of GNU Taler in the Eurozone, Switzerland, and Hungary. It belongs to the NGI TALER consortium and the GNU Taler infrastructure, alongside with GNU Taler’s other tools. It was initiated and is operated by petites singularités.
TALER ICH aims to form a community of stakeholders that will accompany free software developers, open-source hardware engineers, merchants willing to use the GNU Taler software and deploy electronic payment solutions for their use-cases, as well as consumers willing to learn about electronic payments in Euro with GNU Taler, and participate in usability studies to ensure their special needs are taken into account when implementing and deploying electronic payment systems.
From March 1st, 2024,
GNU Taler Integration Community Hub (TALER ICH) is open for a bootstrap phase during which the @early-birds will refine the approach taken towards the NGI TALER Roadmap. TALER ICH is open to the public and all stakeholders are welcome to the conversation.
Adopting free software secure payment system GNU Taler for privacy-preserving transactions in Euro should be easy and practical. Yet there are many different #workflows to consider. TALER ICH will provide views and shortcuts to GNU Taler documentation, as well as a space for sharing expectations and trade constraints.
GNU Taler (Taxable Anonymous Libre Electronic Resources) is a new secure electronic payment system based on open standards, free software, and advanced cryptography. GNU Taler provides privacy guarantees to the buyer while offering the possibility to audit merchants, making sale incomes transparent and fraud difficult. Banks can pass on lower transaction costs to consumers and merchants. Consumers can withdraw money from their existing bank account into their GNU Taler wallet, detaching their spending habits from scrutiny, in the way cash does.
To make GNU Taler accessible to European citizens, we need a commercially viable use of the GNU Taler technology. We will achieve this through the four key project objectives.
- Make GNU Taler legally available to users in the EU via retail banks
- Ensure GNU Taler is accepted as a payment solution by European retailers
- Improve the technical maturity of the GNU Taler software
- Raise the awareness of the project in the general public
TALER Integration Community Hub is a crucial part pursuing these objectives in an open and transparent way involving all stakeholders, working collectively to provide a key societal component in the form of a digital commons: GNU Taler is, and will remain, free software. Free software means to empower its users, upholding four freedoms (to use the software, to study its source code, to modify the software, and to share those modifications) that ensure the software is in the service of its users.
Why it matters
The NGI TALER project started on December 1st, 2023 and is scheduled to run for three years, ending with the wide deployment of GNU Taler software and associated OSHW across the Eurozone, fit for daily use of the Euro in electronic payments, including micro-payments, both online and in your street shop.
This wide scope of addressing various stakeholders in the TALER ICH is unique among all electronic payment systems available on the market. It stems from the free software philosophy and the will to include all citizens in the creation of something as fundamental in our society as how we approach our economy and handle money. We hope that you will share our dedication to providing an inclusive, accessible, secure electronic payment system for all.
TALER ICH provides a public space and a safe place:
- to learn and think about critical features of society: digital identity and electronic payment;
- to share activity-specific needs and discuss bespoke workflows among professionals with free software developers;
- to coordinate technical pools among developers and integrators serving the trade;
- to document use-cases extensively, to express needs, and to coordinate development and feedback, from the community to the GNU Taler developers.
TALER Open Calls
Open calls will be an important component of TALER to boost integration with other actors and expand adoption in many economic sectors. Calls will occur during 24 months of the project, and will support 40 to 60 projects that want to integrate GNU Taler to other systems, or projects that want to improve an implementation already funded under other previous open calls.
TALER ICH maintains the Open Calls Helpdesk at https://ich.taler.net/och.
Next deadline to propose: 
1 April 2024, 12:00 CEST.
NGI TALER
The NGI TALER consortium, led by Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) consists of 11 partners from 8 European countries (the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg and Switzerland).
The NGI TALER project is co-funded by the European Union 
under the HORIZON Innovation Actions of the DG-CNECT, programme topic HORIZON-CL4-2023-HUMAN-01-12, project number 101135475. The project benefits from an EU contribution of 4.508.355.40 € over a duration of three years.
This work has received funding from the 
Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).
For more information about the project, please visit NGI TALER Consortium page at https://taler.net/en/ngi-taler.html.
Contact
| Role | Team | Email address | Topic |
|---|---|---|---|
| Press inquiry | @gotaler.team | press@ich.taler.net | https://ich.taler.net/pub/press-inquiry |
| Announcements | @gotaler.team |  |
@GoTALER@ich.taler.net |
Onboarding  |
@onboarding.team | onboarding@ich.taler.net | https://ich.taler.net/g/onboarding.team |
| Questions | - | ask@ich.taler.net | FAQ - TALER ICH |
| TALER consortium | @NGI-TALER | ngi-taler@taler.net | https://taler.net/en/ngi-taler.html |
| petites singularités | @ps-editions | petites-singularites@lesoiseaux.io | https://ps.lesoiseaux.io/taler |
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