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Re: [Taler] your opinion on article: The cashless society is a con – an


From: Christian Grothoff
Subject: Re: [Taler] your opinion on article: The cashless society is a con – and big finance is behind it | Brett Scott | Opinion | The Guardian
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2018 10:00:19 +0200
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On 07/25/2018 09:40 AM, RIEMANN Robert wrote:
> 3) Degree of centralisation as regards Taler
> 
> This sounds a bit as you would think of Taler just being a more
> privacy-friendly alternative to replace Visa. I wonder if the
> existence of multiple payment providers improves the availability of
> the service. Consumers could also choose a service operating in their
> own jurisdiction. Note that also encrypted bank transactions are
> subject to the GDPR and compliance may be easier to accomplish with
> no data transfers to third countries.
Well, I would always expect Taler providers to operate in the same
jurisdiction as the consumer. To begin with, usually banking regulators
are very unhappy with banks that don't have a presence in their
jurisdiction. And to minimize network latency you also want to be close
to the customer.  So when I was talking about there being a reason for
having a "few" providers for economies of scale and anonymity set size,
that doesn't mean that there couldn't be dozens or even hundreds for the
Euro-zone assuming there is a sufficient volume of transactions using
the system(s).


But this all still does apply to Visa/Mastercard as well: their payment
processors are located in physical proximity to the customers, so both
issuers and acquirers do have a more local point of presence.  And
naturally those transactions fall under local jurisdictions.


All that said, with an open standard and free software reference
implementation, your point about customers having more of a _choice_
would of course be true for Taler.  And the existence of (proper)
competition and thus a working market place ought to ensure that
availability is better, simply because a lack of high-availability will
cause customers to seek out alternative providers.

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