Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

I wish more of these government-baked payment systems would just use GNU Taler [1] instead of implementing their own walled gardens.

GNU Taler ensures that the paying customer is anonymous while the merchant is identified and taxable. This is great for privacy, but not very attractive for commercial companies as your revenue has to be fully based on fees instead of making extra money by selling your customers data. The Swiss National Bank showed interest in adopting it some years ago, but I haven't heard much anymore since…

[1] https://www.taler.net

> GNU Taler ensures that the paying customer is anonymous

This right here is the reason why governments won't use it. Governments want transactions to be traceable so that they can audit your taxes. I don't have any issues with that, I actually don't mind paying taxes, but I would never expect a government, no matter how progressive, to use a privacy-based protocol or solution.

It’s designed with taxes in mind. Total user cashflow is still apparent at the bank, just like if you withdrew cash. And the amounts received by vendors are visible as well. So taxable there too. That’s a big part of what’s so cool about it.

Governments all over the world generally want more surveillance, not less. Brazil in particular will never use it: anonymity is literally unconstitutional in Brazil.

There was a fun period where the brazilian government mandated the use of free and open source software in its computers. I remember lots of people who complained about the quality of OpenOffice. Microsoft managed to put an end to that at some point. After former president Dilma's impeachment, I think.