Is there an alternative way to pay for a yearly Privacy Guides membership? It looks like the current way is to use Stripe, but I’d personally like to avoid that. Are there any plans to allow gift cards, cash or some other payment method before the 40% discount is over?
1 Like
You can pay with Crypto. See more here:
This does not however have the 40% discount as I understand it.
I donated via Monero and it hasn’t really Vern effective. Jonah said he would try to add my membership manually and that I would have to remind him each year manually.
He hasn’t been able to, or hasn’t, yet. I’m not salty. I was happy to donate regardless. But,just be aware there doesn’t seem to be an alternative method that works.
1 Like
Yeah, Stripe is really toxic to privacy. Their fingerprinting scripts appear on a lot of the internet, sometimes even where those websites aren’t taking payments. 
Payments privacy overall is in a bad state.
Cryptocurrencies like Monero are private, but not easily accessible to most people, as governments fight it.
There is a private and open source payment system https://www.taler.net/ which was funded by EU, so have historic government support which is good, and is already developed, except it is still not adopted by the banks for unknown reasons. It needs at least 1 bank or company in each country to support it for things to work.
Taler does not seem to support subscriptions, but maybe some sort of subscriptions system could be developed: one can submit grant application to maybe develop such recurrent system NLnet; NGI TALER . Applications close December 1st, anyone can apply. Recently liberapay got a grant to integrate Taler ( NLnet; Taler in Liberapay “Liberapay is a recurrent donations platform, that allows users to financially support people who contribute to the commons.”), so recurrent integration is possible.
Oh, nice. I’ve been aware of Taler for a long time, but kinda lost hope of it ever getting traction. I didn’t know about the Liberapay integration - that’s good to see!
It seems the process of purchasing a membership on PG comes down to simply making the payment and telling them which email address the membership should go to. There’s no requirement to prove you’re the one who owns the email address, so it looks like it’s totally possible to gift a membership to someone else.
If anyone wants to purchase a year of membership without touching Stripe and is willing to take a small leap of faith with a stranger, DM me and I can purchase on your behalf if you send me the equivalent in Monero.
I don’t know if this solicitation will bode well with Privacy Guides policies. I’m thinking not. It’s very easy to pay via Crypto so not sure if this is even a problem.
I didn’t anticipate that such a thing would be against policy. Not sure why it would be, but if it is, then never mind!
It’s easy to donate with crypto. The “problem“ is getting the membership and discount.
1 Like
When did you loose hope? Personally I only learned about it recently, so I am excited about this payment system.
I just looked in more detail to their news: GNU Taler: News History goes back many years, but they had many interesting milestones recently.
Apparently only in 2024 they got funding from EU (NLNet), where they launched grant program (for anyone can apply every 3 months), and they partnered with 2 banks as part of this funded project:
- In Germany Taler - in Zukunft digital, sicher und nachhaltig bezahlen - GLS Bank
- In Hungary TALER Project
And these banks also receive funding for implementation as well. So if they receive funding, I hope they implement it fully.
Also found another nice website Taler Systems SA - Home, a company behind Taler. With Richard Stallman in team photos 
Taler Systems SA - Company
But apparently they did think about subscription a lot, here is the poster describing solution from 2024 September news:
As I understood it, money is charged if user use the service. If user don’t use the service, subscription stops by design. Because users themselves manage private subscription on their own wallets. Pretty interesting. Decentralized. No central database to link users.
But we could also imagine central database continuously renewing subscriptions as well, for example Proton Wallet, but that would be not as securely-private as on ones own device, but centralized database model possible as well, if there is a need for such.
When did you loose hope? Personally I only learned about it recently, so I am excited about this payment system.
I was excited at first too, but after a few years of the project being out there but not actually usable because of no bank participation, I began to worry that this might be a case where the political/organizational obstacles prove insurmountable even after the technical challenges are resolved. I hope not though!
1 Like
?
We did get that set up when you messaged me 
It shows “Member” next to your name here too, which means you should have access. If you’re having trouble accessing anything feel free to send me another DM in that thread. Thank you for your support!
Man, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize that. My apologies if I made it seem like I was complaining. I’m glad you corrected me.
Happy to support.
1 Like