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.
I’m expecting that if she has been scammed and her token was stolen, you can report this token to the police and they might be able to ask the banking system in which account was this token deposited, to hopefully trace the scammer back.
If so, this looks safer than the scams that ask grandmas to get giftcard codes.
But that’s assuming that the token was obtained from grandm’s bank and not that the grandma paid a scammer in some other untraceable way to obtain a fake token from the scammer. That would be a different kind of scam.