Implementing interfaces with abstract base classes is much simpler in modern Python 3 and they serve a purpose as an interface contract for plug-in extensions.

Create the interface/abstract base class:

from abc import ABC, abstractmethod

class AccountingSystem(ABC):

    @abstractmethod
    def create_purchase_invoice(self, purchase):
        pass

    @abstractmethod
    def create_sale_invoice(self, sale):
        log.debug('Creating sale invoice', sale)

Create a normal subclass and override all abstract methods:

class GizmoAccountingSystem(AccountingSystem):

    def create_purchase_invoice(self, purchase):
        submit_to_gizmo_purchase_service(purchase)

    def create_sale_invoice(self, sale):
        super().create_sale_invoice(sale)
        submit_to_gizmo_sale_service(sale)

You can optionally have common implementation in the abstract methods as in create_sale_invoice(), calling it with super() explicitly in the subclass as above.

Instantiation of a subclass that does not implement all the abstract methods fails:

class IncompleteAccountingSystem(AccountingSystem):
    pass

>>> accounting = IncompleteAccountingSystem()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: Can't instantiate abstract class IncompleteAccountingSystem with abstract methods
create_purchase_invoice, create_sale_invoice

You can also have abstract properties, static and class methods by combining corresponding annotations with @abstractmethod.

Abstract base classes are great for implementing plugin-based systems. All imported subclasses of a class are accessible via __subclasses__(), so if you load all classes from a plugin directory with importlib.import_module() and if they subclass the base class, you have direct access to them via __subclasses__() and you can be sure that the interface contract is enforced for all of them during instantiation.

Here's the plugin loading implementation for the AccountingSystem example above:

...
from importlib import import_module

class AccountingSystem(ABC):

    ...
    _instance = None

    @classmethod
    def instance(cls):
        if not cls._instance:
            module_name = settings.ACCOUNTING_SYSTEM_MODULE_NAME
            import_module(module_name)
            subclasses = cls.__subclasses__()
            if len(subclasses) > 1:
                raise InvalidAccountingSystemError('More than one '
                        f'accounting module: {subclasses}')
            if not subclasses or module_name not in str(subclasses[0]):
                raise InvalidAccountingSystemError('Accounting module '
                        f'{module_name} does not exist or does not '
                        'subclass AccountingSystem')
            cls._instance = subclasses[0]()
        return cls._instance

Then you can access the accounting system plugin object through the AccountingSystem class:

>>> accountingsystem = AccountingSystem.instance()

(Inspired by this PyMOTW-3 post.)