In the digital economy, payments play a critical role. Yet online payment systems tend to allow for far less privacy than paying with a bank note or coins, especially when using proprietary solutions like Google Pay or Apple Pay. When interacting with the offline economy comes into play, the alternative of paying with all kind of volatile cryptocurrencies isn't a viable option either.
NGI TALER is a project funded by the European Commission and the Swiss State to roll out a new electronic payment system that benefits everyone: people, merchants, banks, financial authorities, auditors and anti-corruption researchers. The project doesn't have to start from scratch either, but builds on the strong foundations of GNU Taler — the privacy-preserving digital payment system developed by the GNU community and Taler Systems SA. This offers privacy for those that make payments, while enforcing transparency on those that sell. By providing micro payments at very low overhead, GNU Taler permits internet business models to shift away from advertising revenue or subscription models, especially for online publishers. No-risk transactions can lower transaction fees and open online payments for the underbanked population and citizens marginalized from digitalisation.
Part of the budget of NGI TALER (15% to be precise) is reserved for open calls to fund additional free and open source efforts that are aligned with the topics and approach of NGI TALER. We invite your contributions to help reshape the state of play of digital payment systems, and to help create an open, trustworthy and reliable internet for all. Of course you can contribute exciting new capabilities to GNU Taler itself, build auxiliary tools or work on user experience, but you could also be developing integrations into FOSS applications and open standards (enabling P2P micropayments in for instance an instant messenger, open social media platform or video conferencing tool), or work on improvements to infrastructure components like merchant backends. Together with the rest of the Next Generation Internet initiative, we move towards restoring and subsequently maintaining European sovereignty and to secure democratic ownership of our digital societies.
In order to enable you to make such contributions, we will award up to 676 254 euro in small to medium-size R&D grants towards technology commons that empower users, and establish a new generation of privacy-friendly digital payments systems. The programme will run between now and November 2026, but budgets are limited — so grab your opportunity.
Project results must be made available under a free and open source license, so anyone can read and validate the source code, and anyone can use the code to create technology that fits their own purposes. We are seeking project proposals between 5.000 and 50.000 euro's — if the project works out well you can subsequently scale up in other programmes funded by NLnet such as NGI0 Core. Reliable, low-cost, secure and resource efficient payments should become the 'new normal' of the internet, something ordinary users should not have to worry about — users should be in control. So let's make it happen. Note that GNU Taler itself was funded through such Next Generation Internet projects, so there is every opportunity to grow.
Through the open calls, we assist independent researchers and developers to join in and create powerful new technologies and put these in the hands of future generations as building blocks for a fair and democratic society. Help us build a sustainable and open economy that benefits all, and submit your idea today. Not sure whether your idea fits? Don't be afraid to send something completely out-of-the-box if you think you can contribute to the topic (and it fits with the eligibility criteria): it really is an open call.
Want to learn more about Taler before you submit a proposal, or have other questions? Take a look at the GNU Taler technology, the main NGI Taler site - or join the GNU Taler Integration Community Hub to have a chat about your ideas.
