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GNU Enters Fiat Banking
Talers use from a users standpoint.
1.The customer selects an exchange (i.e. by visiting the respective website or selecting from a list of exchanges in the application) and asks the wallet to create bank transfer instructions to withdraw a certain amount of electronic cash. The bank transfer instructions will contain an access code that must be included in the subject of the transaction, as well as the wire details for the exchange (i.e. a SEPA account number).
2.The customer then instructs his bank to transfer funds from his account to the Taler exchange using these instructions provided by the wallet (top left).
3.Once the funds have arrived, the wallet will automatically withdraw the electronic coins. The customer can use the wallet to review his remaining balance at any time. He can also make backups to secure his digital coins against hardware failures.
4.When visiting a merchant that supports Taler, an additional payment option for Taler is enabled in the checkout system. If the customer selects payments via Taler, the wallet displays the secured contract from the merchant and asks for confirmation. Taler does not require the customer to provide any identity information to the merchant. Transaction histories and digitally signed contracts can be preserved in the wallet for future review by the customer, or even use in court.
https://www.taler.net/citizens
Taler from a merchants standpoint.
1.The new logic detects when a customer's system supports Taler and then needs to send a cryptographically signed version of the proposed contract in a simple JSON format to the customer. The message also includes salted, hashed wire details for the merchant, as well as restrictions as to which exchange operators the merchant is willing to deal with.
2.The customer sends a signed response which states that certain digital coins now belong to the merchant to both signal acceptance of the deal as well as to pay the respective amount (bottom).
3.The merchant then forwards the signed messages received from the customer to the exchange, together with its wire details and the salt (without hashing). The exchange verifies the details and sends a signed confirmation (or an error message) to the merchant. The merchant checks that the exchange's signature is valid, sends a confirmation to the customer and executes the contract-specific business logic.
4.The exchange performs wire transfers corresponding to the claims deposited by the merchant. Note that the exchange may charge fees for the deposit operation, hence merchants may impose limits restricting the set of exchange operators they are willing to deal with, for example by imposing a bound on deposit fees.
https://www.taler.net/merchants
Taler from a governments standpoint.
From the banking system: The total amount of digital currency obtained by a customer. The government could impose limits on how many digital coins a customer may withdraw within a given timeframe.
From the banking system: The total amount of income received by any merchant via the Taler system.
From auditing the exchange: The amounts of digital coins legitimately withdrawn by customers from the exchange, the value of non-redeemed digital coins in customer's wallets, the value and corresponding wire details of deposit operations performed by merchants with the exchange, and the income of the exchange from transaction fees.
From auditing merchants: For each deposit operation, the exact details of the underlying contract that was signed between customer and merchant. However, this information would typically not include the identity of the customer. Note that while the customer can decide to prove that it was his transaction (i.e. in court when suing the merchant if the merchant failed to deliver on the contract), merchant, exchange and government cannot find out the customer's identity from the information that Taler collects.
https://www.taler.net/governments
