Yeah I don't think a FOSS equivalent will ever exist. Google pay isn't just an app that gives the machine your card number, it's an entire payment processing system like a bank.
this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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Privacy
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Its closer than you think: GNU Taler is exactly that and they just announced that they will do a pilot with a German and an Hungarian coop bank.
I do not get it! It sounds more like another crypto that a fiat payment system! Bother sender and receiver need Taler making it very un - interoperable. They also love stating that the receiver can be taxed. Lame!
No it has nothing to do with crypto currencies.
Its a payment system like credit cards or google pay, which also needs support on both sides.
And for it to ever get regulatory approval to work with existing banks and fiat currencies it will need to have some sort of seller transparency (i.e. tax transparency). But this is a big step forward for a digital payment system to have cash like buyer privacy, which no other digital payment system currently has (arguably not even crypto currencies).
Ok. I was reading about its Kudos Coin - but it seems that this is just a monopoly/play test currency for the system. The constant sycophantic notices about tax evasion etc are still lame! Hopefully it takes off but if I had to bet I would do so for it failing.
It's an uphill battle, but GNU Taler is by far the best chance we have in over a decade, so it's important to support it if possible.
The whole money system is proprietary and anti privacy at its core. Use cash, move money away from private banks and into central bank money (cash). Not really traceable. Perfect.
Dont forget Monero. Fully FOSS cash for the digital age
yeah but where can you actually pay with crypto in the real world, because I haven't seen any places
Money laundromats.
Directly, not many places. Through gift cards. Absolute fucktons of places. I have been purchasing my groceries with Monero for over a year now, every single month, and bought some home insulation with Monero, and bought Thanksgiving dinner from a restaurant with Monero as well.
Edit: i also pay my phone bill with Monero
Edit 2: Truly, the only thing I have not figured out how to pay with Monero is direct debits, such as car payments, mortgage payments, etc. that require a bank and routing number. Anything payable with a credit or debit card is fair game.
The whole gift card secondary market is sketchy as fuck though. I've dipped my foot in a bit and it seems like most of the inventory is the result of scammers converting their gains into usable currency.
Not all of it for sure. Sometimes people just want to unload gift cards they'll never use. But that seems like the exception rather than the rule.
Like, why is this dude from Nigeria selling tens of thousands of dollars worth of US-locked gift cards?
Also, all these large companies and regulatory bodies are completely aware of this shit. I don't know why it's tolerated.
The gift cards I purchase are from companies who specialize in the sale of cards such as coincards, coinsbee, and cake pay. These are all registered businesses, so there's less likelihood of crazy crap like you mentioned.
Being a "registered business" doesn't mean anything. Especially when they're in loose jurisdictions with little to no laws or enforcement. And it sure doesn't mean they aren't sketchy and the origin of the cards isn't ethically dubious or even illegal.
You don't ever wonder how they pay like 50% (or less) on the card's face value and resell them at 70-80% for a profit?
I worked a bit on a competitor service and the brokers are all not people I ever want to interact with again. We tried to pierce the veil a little bit and the least sketchy source examples we got were like mechanical turk workers getting paid in gift cards (wage theft basically), and immigrants trying to send money back home to their family from the US (something crypto was supposed to help with).
Coinsbee is german, coincards is canadian, and cake pay is US. Those don't seem like very loose jurisdictions, and they don't sell cards at a discount unless the retailer gives them a discount on the cards to begin with, and then they pass them on.
Cake Pay is registered in St Kitts, for instance. But it doesn't matter. Playing the ignorant middle man can get you legal for the most part.
And I guarantee you that their source of cards is not directly from the retailer.
But whatever. If you don't want to believe me and just want to run with binders on for that sweet 30% off your Amazon purchase, that's your business.
None of those services offer discounts. So either they are getting the cards from reputable sources or they are making a nice markup by getting them from shady places
fuck, I hate carrying around a purse with all that but I guess it will have to do then
You could look at the Taler Project. It is still probably years away from becoming usable but it is a really interesting and promising payment system.
Is it possible to pay with NFC? I read the docs but haven't found anything
I think right now their demo is using QR codes. I don't think the jump from QR to NFC is that difficult but I could be wrong and I don't know what their pipeline is at the moment.
You won't find FOSS.
There are alternatives to Google Pay on Android however. My bank (a "Sparkasse", German government-owned bank) has its own mobile payment app which appears to just simulate a Visa/Mastercard's NFC chip. IME it works pretty much on any terminal that accepts physical contactless cards.
Banks have much stricter privacy policies by law and I need to accept their terms anyways.
Afaik there are none, but I don't really get why I should use these services anyway. Pulling out my phone is only marginally faster than just using a card directly. They do improve security, kinda like a real life PayPal they prevent others from getting your card on file, but it's not worth the cost in privacy imo. That's part of the reason I use a credit card in the first place: Credit companies act as a proxy between you and your bank account and they offer some fraud protection.
Use cash if you want privacy. The card is linked to your name too.
And be sure that Visa and MasterCard are mining your data.
Or even better, make Trotsky happy, use barter
I dont want to use them either but because of lack of alternatives I do use contactless pay of my banks app itself. Does require NFC etc
I only just got an nfc capable phone and checked my banks app, but it does not have it :(
Yep. A PCI DSS update plus the credit card corps would have to allow something like un-chipped virtual cards to be accepted (to be clear there are virtual cards already, but just not attached to wireless pay). At this point both Apple and Samsung don't want to lose this revenue , so yeah it's a real bummer.
Years ago there were some multi-account credit cards floating around. Maybe that could be open sourced... Not sure...
The most techy: copy your bank card nfc (need some hacking)
The compromise: use apps that are not google pay, but still not foss
The easiest: just put your bank card in the case of your phone
The smartest: use monero
The god: use cash
copy your bank card nfc - do you know a guide for this?
I use Garmin Pay on my watch, doesn't require internet to work at stores
that's pretty cool but watches are data hungry as hell so the purpose is defeated
Not if you use offline
Alternatively you can take off the chip from the card and glue to your phone 😏
I hate that your technically not wrong in that its a perfect solution but no thanks lmao
I also couldn't find anything. Not even any banking apps support it because they all work with google pay on android.
wait they all rely on google pay anyway???? damn
Yeah it's stupid and not privacy friendly, but it's not like any bank is privacy friendly nowadays from my experience