We're excited to share that Fleetbase has been awarded a grant from NLnet through the NGI TALER Fund to integrate GNU Taler into our open-source logistics platform. You can find the project on NLnet's site here.
This is our second project with NLnet. Our first, supported through NGI Zero, brought Solid integration to Fleetbase - giving operators control over where their data lives. This new project continues the same thread: open infrastructure that reduces dependence on proprietary providers and hands control back to the organizations actually doing the work.
What we're building
The Fleetbase × Taler project integrates GNU Taler directly into Fleetbase Ledger, our invoicing, accounting, and transaction layer. The result is an open-source extension that lets logistics organizations generate invoices, accept Taler payments, issue refunds, and automatically reconcile transactions — without leaving the platform they already use to run deliveries, fleets, warehousing, and supply chain workflows.
GNU Taler is a payment system built around a simple but unusual principle: it's privacy-preserving for the payer while remaining transparent for the payee, so income stays auditable and taxable. That combination makes it a natural fit for logistics, where invoicing and reconciliation matter as much as the payment itself.
For us, the appeal is sovereignty. Logistics runs on a small number of proprietary payment rails, and every operator that depends on them inherits their fees, their rules, and their lock-in. Pairing privacy-preserving digital payments with an open logistics operating system gives operators a genuine alternative.
Why Fleetbase
Fleetbase is an open-source logistics and supply chain operating system used to manage transportation, deliveries, fleet operations, warehousing, and supply chain workflows. We open-sourced it in 2022 because we believe the infrastructure that moves the physical world shouldn't be a black box. The Ledger extension already handles invoicing, accounting, customer wallets, and financial reporting — Taler slots into that foundation and extends it across other Fleetbase modules.
What's next
The work is already underway, building on an initial driver foundation in the Fleetbase Ledger codebase. Over the coming milestones we'll deliver public invoice checkout with wallet payments, settlement and reconciliation against Taler's exchange model, refund handling, a full admin UI, and sandbox-validated end-to-end testing — all open source, all upstreamed.
We'll be posting progress updates here and to our developer community as each milestone lands. If you want to follow along or contribute, the work happens in the open at github.com/fleetbase.
Thanks to NLnet and the NGI TALER programme for backing this. We're glad to be building it in the open.
This project is funded through the NGI TALER Fund, established by NLnet with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, with additional funding from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).
