The exchange would be operated by a bank or in cooperation with a bank, and that bank would hold the funds in escrow. Note that this bank could be a regular bank or a central bank for a centrally banked electronic currency. Regardless, the bank would fall under the respective banking regulations establishing a reason why consumers would have faith in the conversion from Taler coins into regular bank money.
Today, our wallet implementation does not support recurring payments. Recurring payments, where some fixed amount is paid on a regular basis are in theory possible with Taler, but they come with a few caveats. Specifically, recurring payments can only work if the Taler wallet is running and online around the desired time. Furthermore, given their repetitive nature they are linkable, and could thus be used to deanonymize the user making the recurring payment, for example by forcing the user offline at the time of the payment and observing that it does then not happen on time. Finally, the Taler wallet does not work with credit and thus the user would have to make sure to carry a sufficient balance for the recurring payment to be made. Still, they can be useful, and a future version of the Taler wallet will likely support them. But this is not a feature that we are targeting for Taler 1.0. at this time.
GNU Taler is a <span class="tlr">privacy-preserving</span> payment system. Customers can stay anonymous, but merchants can not hide their income through payments with GNU Taler. This helps to <span class="tlr">avoid tax evasion and money laundering</span>.
The primary use case of GNU Taler is <span class="tlr">payments</span>; it is <span class="tlr">not meant as a store</span> of value. Payments are always backed by an existing currency.
Payments are made after <span class="tlr">exchanging existing money</span> into <em>electronic money</em> with the help of an Exchange service, that is, a payment service provider for Taler.
When making a payment, customers only need a charged wallet. A merchant can accept payments <span class="tlr">without making their customers register</span> on the merchant's Website.
GNU Taler is <span class="tlr">immune against many types of fraud</span>, such as phishing of credit card information or chargeback fraud. In case of loss or theft, only the limited amount of money left in the wallet might be gone.
To pay with Taler, customers install an electronic wallet on their device. Before the first payment, the desired currency must be added to the wallet's balance by some other means of payment.
Once the wallet is charged, payments on websites take only one click, are never falsely rejected by fraud detection and do not pose any risk of phishing or identity theft.
To receive Taler payments, a merchant needs a bank account in the desired currency. We provide supporting software in various programming languages to make the integration painless. The merchant's backend for Taler transaction processing can run on the merchant's premises or be hosted by a third party.
Taler is easy to integrate with existing Web applications. Payments are cryptographically secured and are confirmed within milliseconds with extremely low transaction costs.
Taler does not introduce a new currency. Taler uses a digital wallet storing coins and payment service providers with escrow accounts in existing currencies. Thus, Taler's cryptographic coins correspond to existing currencies, such as US Dollars, Euros or even Bitcoins.
