Governments likely will insist on a mechanism to track electronic currencies, for tax, regulatory and other reasons. Governments seem to have very little concern for privacy. So the mechanism they choose could very well ignore privacy.
By building a mechanism that meets government needs and by being an early mover, Taler could be the de facto solution by the time governments get around to dealing with this issue, and could make privacy the policy.
Taler can also compete with Ukash, since it's free/open any merchant can implement their own Taler for cash business without signing large exclusive contracts with Ukash or waiting a month to be settled by them, as you can freely choose which Mint to do business with.
Merchants of physical goods must know the identity and delivery address of their customers in order to deliver them. Given how easy many companies find it to embed 3rd party trackers or adverts on their site, it seems reasonable to believe that they will also find it easy to sell this data ("to help detect and prevent fraud") to the payment processing companies.
Here are a couple of solutions I've seen but haven't tried:
* Masked Cards by Abine (a privacy service): Abine gives you a card to use and you pay Abine. Obviously, you'll need to trust Abine.
https://dnt.abine.com/#feature/payments
* PaySafeCard: A prepaid card; "You don't have to enter any personal information or bank account or credit card details. Your privacy remains completely protected at all times with paysafecard!"