Amazon announced recently it is rolling out its pay-by-palm services to all 500 Whole Foods Market stores across the country, making it possible for customers to use their palm for purchases without a wallet or phone. This is the most extensive rollout by the e-commerce giant since announcing the payment system in 2021.
“Customers can set up Amazon One by registering their palm print using a kiosk or at a point-of-sale station at participating stores. To register, you need to provide a payment card and phone number, agree to Amazon’s terms of service, and share an image of your palms. Once completed, you can take items to checkout and not have to take out your wallet — or even your phone. A hover of your hand over the device is all that’s needed to pay and leave”.
Amazon said customers had found the new payment system more convenient to checkout, though privacy concerns emerged last year by a group of lawmakers who raised questions about the megacorporation collecting biometric data of its customers.
Whole Foods is among 400 current locations using Amazon One technology, others including Panera Bread, Coors Field in Colorado, airport travel retailers, sports and entertainment venues.
Amazon has said it hopes to sell the palm-scanning technology to more companies like retailers, stadiums and office buildings. Amazon says it is in “active discussions with several potential customers.”
Amazon One appears to be ushering in a cashless society where a customer’s body is becoming a transactional tool. If Amazon’s use of palm prints for identification and payment systems sounds like something you have read in the Book of Revelation you are correct.
The Book of Revelation warns that during the Tribulation every person will be required to accept a mark in their right hand or forehead which will be necessary for commerce.
“And the second beast required all people small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark — the name of the beast or the number of its name. Here is a call for wisdom: Let the one who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and that number is six hundred sixty-six”. Revelation 13:16-18
Many Christians are concerned that acceptance of such technology is conditioning people for when the actual ‘mark of the beast” is implemented.
What often starts off as voluntary can just as easily become mandatory and whereas tech itself may be neutral, in the hands of the wrong person it could be extremely dangerous. Imagine the technology of today in the hands of Hitler.
There are also growing fears that an economic collapse and “reset” could bring about an era of forced digital cash that would be necessary to conduct commerce. Combine such new technologies as pay by palm for commerce with biometric ID cards and you have a very coercive system that the government and future Antichrist could use to control the masses.
Christians have long debated the meaning of the “mark of the beast”. It still remains to be seen if the mark will be digital tattoos, microchips under the skin or some other form of biometric payment using the hand such as Amazon Pay, but there is no denying it, our generation appears to be the first in history to have the technology and now cultural conditioning to fulfill this prophecy.