The governor of the Central Bank of Sweden comments our payment systems.
Here’s an AI translation of the text into English:
“Given the geopolitical situation, it is important to create European systems in a number of areas. This is according to Riksbank Governor Erik Thedéen in an interview with Ekot’s Saturday program, where he emphasizes that Sweden’s payment systems should not be as dependent on the USA as they have been. As an example, he points out that the two dominant credit card issuers, Mastercard and Visa, are American. ‘It is probably wise to consider that we should also have European or Swedish systems that function in case the American ones do not,’ he says. According to the central bank governor, Swish is ‘a certain complement.’ He also highlights that other countries, such as Denmark, have their own national credit cards.”
I see Taler brought up, and it always intrigues me.
What is the current state of it? With the app it looks like I can add a bank potentially but there are no payment service providers populated.
Does it currently function in a way I could transfer money between myself and a friend?
Here is another readme about the state: https://www.taler.net/en/ngi-taler.html
Some banks, mainly cooperative banks, already work with it. But it’s again one of those systems that doesn’t make them money, so I suspect it will die a slow death.
It should work. The stable release was, I think, a few months ago? And it has been operating in Switzerland since the stable release: https://taler-ops.ch/