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FedNow Is Live

federalreserve.gov

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Re: FedNow Is Live

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FedNow is a replacement for ACH which is an ancient, creaking monstrosity. If we can't ever replace or fix old, busted infrastructure because of conspiratorial rambling, we are fucked as a civilization.

I’ve seen a lot of crazy conspiracy theories reveal themselves to be true in the past five years. Apply some critical thinking on this. Governments and corporate elites worldwide are salivating over the level of surveillance and control that a CBDC will enable.

feel free to only use cash for everything

Re: FedNow Is Live

#182
post #149

I don't understand why FedNow and CBDC are such a big issue in the US. FedNow looks quite attractive from a fees perspective, especially when compared to PayPal and alike. Part of me wonders if the middlemen who stand to lose out might be trying to muddy the waters. It wouldn't be the first time.

Two points of context:

* the Biden administration is planning to monitor smaller denomination transactions (in an inflationary environment!)

* IRS resources historically and presently target low-income, low-wealth households/individuals for audits

https://www.cnbc.com/select/irs-600-reporting-rule-delayed/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-audit-eitc-five-times-as-li...

Re: FedNow Is Live

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, it's going to let the government see every transaction you make Can you go into more detail here on what you think will change from the status quo? Existing bank transfers are obviously not secret from the government on request. While the government doesn't have direct access to run search heuristics on the whole dataset they just delegate that to the banks' internal compliance team.

If the government wants to tax these transactions - and let's admit it, they do - they'll take it right off the top. Unlike with the banking system where different banks have different prices for wires - or even free under certain conditions - you can't "shop around" for a new government. Further, if a government determines you are not an "acceptable" participant, they have the ability to stop transactions to/from yo…

It won't be any worse or better than existing federally administered systems. The government already oversees all the major existing bank-to-bank transfer systems mentioned in the press release. In the US banks charge different wire fees because they can as a competitive matter, but they all use FedWire to talk to each other. Just like they can impose arbitrary limits on ACH transfer size but they all use FedACH to handle the actual transfer. This one is just a faster, more secure version of the latter.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#185

Is there going to be a universal SDK / API we can use with this? This would cut alot of middle companies out of the payments industry (or at least put pressure on lowering fees). That would be a huge win. Wish we could do the same for the credit card companies. Would be great if the Federal Government could intervene in some way to have Visa / Mastercard / American Express / Discover use the same API interface for pa…

Shameless plug, but Moov offers a single API for payments. The clearing house's RTP system will be supported shortly, and FedNow is coming soon after. Check out out here: https://moov.io/

Pricing page is all but worthless... no indication what so ever about what even basic tier pricing is, or could be.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already use social security numbers for everything (insurance, credit, etc.). It's pretty much a national ID, just a shitty one.

USG has issued national ID documents for more than 200 years. They're called passports.

Everyone who is sufficiently against national ID must never have left the United States, then? Correlation or causation, I wonder.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FedNow is a replacement for ACH which is an ancient, creaking monstrosity. If we can't ever replace or fix old, busted infrastructure because of conspiratorial rambling, we are fucked as a civilization.

I’ve seen a lot of crazy conspiracy theories reveal themselves to be true in the past five years. Apply some critical thinking on this. Governments and corporate elites worldwide are salivating over the level of surveillance and control that a CBDC will enable.

Possibly so, but an instant payment system is not a CBDC, and I don't see how keeping bank account transfers slow/impossible to initiate for individuals (as seems to be the case for ACH credit transfers) would help against pervasive government surveillance.

ACH and even check clearing are already largely performed by the Fed today!

Re: FedNow Is Live

#188

Are there amount caps?

The network limit is $500,000 per transaction, although individual participants can set specific lower limit, which is defaulted to $100,000.

Furthermore any end user interface provided by the bank could have its own limit, since FedNow is just a backend service, frontends are up to each participating provider.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This isn't true. Private currencies exist(ed) and are afaik still legal. For most of my life, those were ancient history or theoretical. Then in 2009, something changed. And ever since then, I've seen nothing less than the most zealous propaganda campaign to undermine those... it's bizarre to watch it unfold. I keep side-eyeing everyone, wondering if I'm the only one that sees it. Sure, it doesn't help that the cry…

>Saying that it's "legal" doesn't change the fact that if someone were to come up with a private currency, gigantic forces, government and not, would be arrayed against them to put an end to it. Thousands of private currencies exist right now . Nobody would care about your currency, since it is useless, and as such worthless. A centralized currency is an enormous social asset. Nobody wants private currencies. >who co…

> Just try to imagine a currency controlled by amazon. Do you think they won't do some hyperinflation making you poor once a decade?

Do you think that the US government and the fed don't do this? You don't see it, of course, because they also report the numbers you use to decide if there is inflation.

And who says that it has to be controlled at all, in the sense that some singular entity controls it, rather than an algorithm?

> The controller of a currency has enormous power.

Yeh, and it's no less a problem when it's the government rather than Amazon.

> If the government can't handle it nobody can.

That's always been my point.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#190

The press release lists a few big banks like Chase, Wells Fargo, BNY Mellon, US Bank and Fiserv, along with a dog's breakfast of random service providers and credit unions. Since free realtime payments presumably would still require both the sender and the receiver to use a participating financial institution, instead of all participants just transacting directly through the Fed, how is this supposed to work if most…

There are already other options for instant payments in the US. The Zelle network and The Clearings House's RTP have been running for several years, and provide pretty good account reachability today. FedNow is the result of smaller banks and credit unions wanting an alternative to Zelle and RTP which are both owned by consortiums of the big banks. The expectation in the industry is that there will eventually be interoperability between these systems, and it will not make much difference to consumers which one their bank uses. Similar to how paper check and ACH clearing works in the US today.
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