That is not really odd, but rather an expected development. Every government tries to increase its control over its citizens because it simplifies the lives of the government officials and as a whole makes the government more stable (or at least that is what they think).

Being able to control the citizens' payments is essentially the ultimate level of control that a government can exercise over its citizens. If the government wants to find out that a citizen thinks, it doesn't have to bug the citizen's phone, doesn't have to employ spies to track each step of the citizen. Instead the government can just check the list of websites that the citizen visits regularly and check the list of purchases that they make. And the latter can easily be obtained in a world without physical money, where all purchases are made solely through electronic government-controlled money.

That is why each government jumped at the opportunity to replace physical cash with CBDCs as soon as the technology matured enough to make that possible. There is no conspiracy, it's just that all governments are alike and think in the same way.