The first week of April, 2023 marks the beginning of the enrollment and certification process for financial institutions to start participating in the Federal Reserve's new FedNow "Instant Payments" services, which is scheduled to launch in July, 2023. While many in the alternative media (myself included) have linked the FedNow program to Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), technically speaking, FedNow is NOT part of the development of CBDCs. Michelle Bateman, Director of Product Management, Payments at Finastra, is a member of FedNow’s pilot program, and she has stated that the project to develop CBDCs is completely separate from the FedNow Instant Payment service. The main difference is that once CBDCs are rolled out, consumers will have accounts with a Federal Reserve Bank, while the FedNow program does not. The FedNow program will be offering "Master Accounts" at the Federal Reserve for financial institutions only. However, as I have previously stated, rolling out CBDCs is a mammoth project, and cannot be done overnight. It would be foolish to not believe that the FedNow program is not a stepping stone towards CBCDs. As you can see from the flow chart at the top of this article, with the implementation of the FedNow Instant transfer program, all the data involving a financial transaction between two "End-Users" will flow through the Federal Reserve banks. So while they are advertising the FedNow program as a new system that will make payments and wire transfers much quicker and much more convenient, it is also a mass data collection system for the Fed to begin storing private bank information. Will this include all the personal details of account holders in private banks?