Cold hard cash, it is what transactions have been based on for hundreds of years now, but may very soon be a thing of the past.
In Europe, and in particular Sweden, financial transactions and purchases have been made using cards or smart phones and that is becoming true in the United States as well. Many stores are starting to refuse the green stuff even though the sell green stuff.
SweetGreen, a restaurant that as you may have guessed serves up salads and such will only take smart phone payments or cards because they believe that keeping cash on hand is not safe due to robberies and let’s face it, employees can’t skim from the till if there is not till.
What is surprising is that the only state that forces SweetGreen and other restaurants and retailers to accept cash is Massachusetts because they feel that is discriminatory to poor people who sometimes do not open bank accounts.
However, the argument for going cashless is being won among the generations 40 years or younger because they have become accustom to using their phones to pay for things. Starbucks now sees 1 in 5 transactions using their app. People are less likely to carry cash or to write checks these days because it is just easier to swipe a card or tap your phone.
Using cash though allows certain anonymity and avoids a “paper trail” that is no longer paper. It’s easy for law enforcement and others to know what you have been doing because everything is recorded. So, cash is great for privacy but also for criminal activity.
The real problem arises from having a biblical perspective because all of this makes it easier for the mark of the beast to be established. When our buying and selling can be turned on or off with a few keystrokes of a computer keyboard we should be paying attention to who is behind the monitor.
While it may take a bit more time to become mainstream in America, the cashless society is not that far away, electronics are advancing rapidly and being incorporated into so-called personal tech, like the watch or the tattoo.
Just last week it was announced that a new tattoo had been developed that could tell your adult beverage server if you were near or past the legal blood alcohol limit, other tattoos have been developed that could give doctors your medical history and stats or contain your financial data.
Wait, your financial data? That’s right, while it is still clunky and not very attractive, the tattoo may be the means to stop identity theft and the “I forgot my wallet” syndrome, but also to control buying and selling by means of a mark.
The bible said it was coming and we are already being conditioned to accept tattoos and to go cashless if we have our phones or cards with us and who among us is willing to live on the fringes of society without our Starbucks app tattooed to the back of our hands. Could you go without your white cup caffeine fix or will you stockpile on Folgers and power down the phone?
The time is not that far off or I could just be a little paranoid.
