Use case: lots of grassroots nonprofits and mutual aid collectives rely on P2P payments between members to help get needs met. Is there any way to make these transactions more private? Would something like privacy.com > cashapp or venmo do anything to protect users’ privacy?
Bonus points for simplicity (tall order, I know). I’m technologically inclined, but I’m hoping for a solution that less tech-savvy folks could use after some setup assistance.
Cash is king in this case. Unfortunately all of these digital platforms are highly surveilled from a financial privacy perspective. This is the main appeal of cryptocurrency for many, but simple it is not.
If you’re doing digital payments the best thing you can really do is avoid as many of the big tech middlemen as possible, and that usually means going with whatever your bank supports, which could be just checks to be honest. It could be Zelle which is owned by a group of the major banks. Not the best but better than PayPal/Venmo.
GNU Taler is being used to some capacity in Switzerland I believe. It’s not something you could just choose to use right now but I hope more banks and countries adopt that technology to solve some of these issues.
Yeah I’m really looking forward to what happens with this tool. I hope adoption increases for a new way to transact and bank.
All the mentioned tools are essentially payment facilitators for an actual bank. The KYC/AML requirements in any modern country will flow down from the bank through the payment ecosystem to these payment facilitators. Said another way, they all require proof of identity and upstream reporting requirements. Here’s some fun reading to learn how thorough is the reporting and financial surveillance in the USA.
Cash is king here. Although, be wary that governments are also looking at cash transactions for terrorism.