GNU Taler begins operating in Switzerland, distributed by the Taler Operations AG. Gnu Taler aims to be a “digital wallet” and has been used by the swiss national bank as well as the european national bank as a example for how a digital currency handed out by the state could work. It aims to be as privacy preserving as cash for the buyer while not allowing the seller to evade taxes.
Currently the Taler is brought out by a special organisation, the “Taler Operations AG”, and not the national bank, although both the national bank as well as the Taler Team have shown interest in a official digial currency by the national bank based on the Taler. But we need to relativate as the national council has stated that the introduction of a digital currency would probably take relatively major legislative changes and therefore take a bit of time.
Is there some sort of an overview of all the components that are required for the whole system to work? Are there opportunities for new PSPs to emerge and try to topple the existing ones with better and cheaper service?
https://www.taler.net/en/docs.html
If you want to exchange official fiat currencies you need something that libeufin can talk to via the standartized banking api. Everything else is included in Taler and ready to be used with unofficial regional currencies for example.