EU-Wide Advantages & Opportunities Under NGI TALER Open Call 2025-08T

1. Single Market Access – 450 + Million Consumers

• Instant reach to the entire Eurozone and wider EEA, enabling friction-less roll-out of privacy-preserving payments in 27 Member States plus EFTA.

• One integration of GNU Taler APIs can service users in multiple currencies (EUR, CHF, SEK, etc.) thanks to SEPA and PSD2 open-banking rails.

• Merchants gain a uniform micro-payment option, letting EU publishers, SMEs and creators shift from ad-driven to pay-per-use revenue models.

2. Cross-Border Collaboration & Knowledge Exchange

• The cascade-funding model lowers barriers for multinational consortia: freelancers in Spain can co-develop with OSS cooperatives in Germany and academic labs in Estonia.

• Eligible costs for travel & networking can be combined with NGI community events (NGI Forum, FOSDEM, OSS EU Summit), accelerating peer learning.

• Harmonised IPR rules (FOSS licences required) ensure immediate code sharing across borders, avoiding national-level legal frictions.

3. Alignment with Key EU Strategies

• Digital Decade 2030: advances secure, privacy-enhancing e-payments—one of the headline targets.

• European Data Strategy: keeps payment telemetry out of Big-Tech silos, respecting GDPR & ePrivacy.

• Green Deal: low-energy, off-line capable protocol reduces CO₂ compared with proof-of-work crypto and high-overhead card schemes.

• SME Strategy & Retail Payments Strategy: empowers small merchants with 0-chargeback, low-fee payments; strengthens EU fintech autonomy.

4. Regulatory Harmonisation Advantages

• PSD2 & the upcoming PSD3/PSR provide a single licence passporting regime for TPPs—projects can prototype once and deploy EU-wide.

• Anti-Money-Laundering Regulation (AMLR) compliance is baked-in (transparency for merchants, privacy for payers), simplifying audits in all Member States.

• Upcoming Digital Euro experimentation: Taler-based wallets can serve as reference implementations for programmable cash, aligning with ECB sandbox calls.

5. Integration into Europe’s Innovation Ecosystem

• Direct line to NGI network (> 100 funded projects, living labs, and DIHs) for piloting and test-bed access.

• Synergies with EBSI (European Blockchain Services Infrastructure) and Gaia-X data spaces enable rapid federation.

• Collaboration potential with European universities excelling in privacy tech (KU Leuven, TU Darmstadt, EPFL, etc.) via joint secondments or research contracts.

6. Funding Synergies & Leverage

• Combine €5–50 k NGI TALER grant with:

• Horizon Europe Cluster 4 (Digital) IA/RIA calls for larger pilots (up to €5 m).

• Digital Europe Programme DEP-Cyber or DEP-Cloud for infrastructure deployment.

• EIC Accelerator for market scale-up (up to €2.5 m grant + €15 m equity).

• National Recovery & Resilience Funds earmarked for digital payments.

• Staged-funding logic: small Taler proof-of-concept ➔ NGI0 Core (€200 k) ➔ Eurostars or Eureka for TRL-7/8.

7. EU-Scale Deployment & Impact Potential

• Interoperability with SEPA Instant positions solutions for real-time payments across 36 countries.

• Supports financial inclusion: Taler offline tokens + eIDAS 2.0 wallets allow unbanked EU citizens & refugees to participate in digital commerce.

• High replicability: open-source components can be localised (UI, VAT handling) and adopted by regional cooperatives, municipalities and social-economy platforms.

• Potential to become reference standard in upcoming EU Digital Identity Wallets (EUDI), making privacy-preserving cash-like payments a default feature for every European resident.

8. Strategic Value of EU-Level Operation

1. Economies of scale in compliance: one GDPR/AML assessment covers 27 Member States.

2. Ability to influence emerging standards at CEN/CENELEC, ETSI and ISO via NGI stakeholder groups.

3. Credibility & trust from EC funding boosts adoption by national regulators and central banks.

4. Access to pan-European procurement (PPPs, PCPs, PPI) where digital payment modules are mandatory (e.g., smart city platforms, e-government portals).

9. Actionable Next Steps for Applicants

• Map your innovation to at least one EU flagship (Digital Decade KPI, EUDI, AMLR, PSD3) to strengthen evaluation score.

• Seek consortium partners in other Member States early to showcase EU value-added.

• Reference complementary EU instruments in your proposal budget to demonstrate scalability path.

• Highlight environmental metrics (energy/tx) to align with Green Deal and Digital Product Passport discussions.

Bottom Line: NGI TALER’s cascade funding offers an unprecedented, low-bureaucracy entry point to the EU market, unlocking regulatory, financial, and collaborative advantages that are only achievable at continental scale. Tapping into this grant positions your project at the heart of Europe’s push for sovereign, privacy-respecting, and sustainable digital payments.