Re: [Taler] "Gift vouchers" in Taler?

[Christian Grothoff]

On 1/9/24 22:06, Hartmut Goebel wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm just trying to imagine use-cases beside actual payment in some 
> official currency.
>
> Could GNU Taler be used to distribute some kind of "gift vouchers". E.g. 
> an governmental organization could give out vouchers for FFP2 masks, 
> bag-toilets (peepoo), vaccinations, etc. Of course, such a voucher could 
> not be a currency, since one would need a separate currency, merchant, 
> exchange for every single product.
>
> Is this possible with Taler - and if so: how?

We're working on merchant-issued tokens, where one use case is "gift 
vouchers" that would be then bound to the issuing merchant, which is 
usually what you want for gift vouchers. Documentation is here:

https://docs.taler.net/design-documents/046-mumimo-contracts.html

Naturally, if the vouchers are to be redeemed at more than one merchant, 
the way to do it would be to create a new currency for each category.

Note: Jeff also has some (orthogonal) technical ideas for rationing, but
rationing is not exactly gift vouchers.