𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗 𝙼𝚎𝚘𝚠

Most banks don’t yet. German banks were lagging behind on implementation so the launch was delayed.

GNU Taler’s documentation already covers KYC laws.

For exchanges, yes. For merchants, no.

They would only need to wait 2 weeks if they specifically want to be able to reverse a charge, but AFAIK a merchant can take possession of the money much earlier, and can still send a refund to a buyer’s Taler wallet at any time as a separate transaction.

Merchants can’t take possession of the funds, the exchange determines when the money is sent. After that, according to the docs a refund will trigger a 410 Gone status code.

https://docs.taler.net/core/api-merchant.html#obtaining-refunds

It seems there is a template to offer a refund, but the customer would have to go and “accept” the refund manually, which is poor UX compared to every other payment method out there where this happens automatically.

I’m not sure how that’s a problem specifically? Why does it matter if they gain a little interest on it on the time that they have it until the merchant exchanges their tokens for the money? Is that worse than the fees associated with Wero?

It means exchanges are financially incentivised to keep hold of the funds for as long as possible, delaying payments. In a world that’s rapidly moving towards instant payments (like Wero), this means transferring money will happen at a snails pace. You can configure the wire deadline, but given that shortening it makes the refund UX worse I’m not sure it’s ideal. It’s weird to have this be a tradeoff anyway.

If you have a more clear source, let me know.

Fees differ per country, it’s based on what the previous most popular payment method offered. In NL it’s cheaper because iDEAL is fairly cheap. But here’s a source on BE costs: https://www.ing.be/en/business/payments/wero/wero

0.3% per transaction under €33.33, and a flat €0.10 for transactions of €33.33 or more.

Basically you pay a percentage, but it’s capped at a maximum transaction amount. Far cheaper than creditcards at least.

Taler doesn’t offer consumer protection, and the anonymous aspect might sound nice but KYC laws prevent merchants from accepting it (and in a lot of cases, knowing who the customer is is quite helpful from a merchant perspective).

But the real killer to me seems to be this (from the Taler docs):

It is possible for the merchant to refund a contract order, for example if the contract cannot be fulfilled after all. Refunds are only possible after the customer paid and before the exchange has wired the payment to the merchant. Once the funds have been wired, refunds are no longer allowed by the Taler exchange.

This basically means your payment method is dead on conception. Online stores in the EU are required to offer no-questions-asked refunds within 2 weeks. This means a store has to wait 2 weeks at minimum before they get their money (modern payment methods are instant or next-day, 2 weeks is exceptionally long). That’s a massive dealbreaker. It also means exchanges can make tons of money by keeping the transferred funds in their account and collecting interest on it.

It also weirdly means that refunds aren’t possible once a transfer is settled. That’s a weirdly brief window imo.

It’s also quite funny to me that Taler claims to be immune to chargeback fraud, when it doesn’t offer chargebacks in the first place. Makes it easy, don’t it?

I don’t really see why a consumer or merchant would necessarily want to use this over other options. Perhaps a restaurant might, or some other store that sells things that are intended to be consumed immediately, or a service provided immediately (like a theme park or cinema). But even then there’s other, more widely available options instead.

Wero is in a completely different space, doing primarily ecom payments instead. Taler doesn’t do what Wero does any better (or in many cases, at all it seems).