Strapped For Cash

Cashless society by 2012, says Visa chief
By Tim Webb
Published: 11 March 2007

Paying for goods with notes and coins could be consigned to history within five years, according to the chief executive of Visa Europe.
Peter Ayliffe said that, by 2012, using credit and debit cards should be cheaper and more convenient than cash.
Some retailers could soon start surcharging customers if they choose to buy products with cash, because of the greater cost of processing these payments, he warned.
Visa Europe briefed the British Retail Consortium last month on new "contactless" cards that can be waved in front of a scanner to make small payments.
However, the consortium dismissed this vision and claimed that card processing fees, which regulators are investigating, are still too high.
One member of the consurtium said that the estimated "interchange" fee charged to retailers amounts to some 4p for each transaction.
Nick Mourant, treasurer at Tesco, said: "There is a duopoly between Mastercard and Visa in the UK. Their setting of fees is anti-competitive."

Rev. 13:16 He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, 17so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.

We are less than five years away from the end of the Mayan calendar. In 2012, the world is not likely to end, but cash could. But it's a sticky problem. Still, Europe is likely to get there first.

The global money supply still has a mysterious underground that exists beneath the watchful gaze of governments: paper money. But the exorcism of cash might transfer power from governments to financial institutions. So the conversion of economies to cashless is a road fraught with certain perils.

The mysterious verse from the Apocalypse, cited above, is technologically possible today. And what lies on the horizon of human invention when the nanochip kicks in? As in the sci-fi movie The Minority Report, the potential exists to keep close tabs on every human alive.

The verse above places this "mark" in the "right hand" or "forehead". The Greek word for forehead there is "the area of the eyes." Today we have scanning machines that can read the patterns of the hand and the iris, something which is unique to every person. Great potential here.

Could a world dictator arise someday and utilize this technology to control world economy? Or is this verse just referring in cryptic fashion to the Roman emperors of the time it was written, who required everyone to worship the emperor?

The word "beast" or "creature" used in the ancient apocalyptic literature did refer to empires, as in the four beasts of Daniel which represented Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. Or is this beast more representative of the general fallen nature of man? Is this mark just a figurative one?

It should be noted that the word "beast" in Revelation 13 also seems to refer to an individual, in the biblical manner of connecting rulers to governments. This idea fuels futurist speculation that this beast refers to a coming false messiah, fleshed out by passages in Daniel about the "Little Horn."

Whatever it is, the cashless world is a tempting apple. It might even become necessity to wire the world for digital monetary transaction. Fitting that Europe, the site of the old Roman Empire, would be at the forefront of this transformation. That would seem to line up with many futurist predictions based on biblical prophecy.