On April 17, one of China’s largest banks, the Bank of Communications, launched a new “mobile credit card” product making it the first bank to make a credit card’s features completely digital: from the initial card application, to approval, issue and use, the entire process occurs online. Then on April 18, the first “Cashless Alliance” in the world was launched by Ant Financial in collaboration with the United Nations and 15 other partners to promote finance mechanisms with ecological benefits. Ant Finance will also invest 6 billion RMB ($870 million) in the next two years to develop tech capabilities and support the Alliance partners.
The mobile credit card received more than 833,000 applications within two weeks, and 81% of the applications were approved within 30 seconds; meanwhile, the Cashless Alliance registered more than 1,000 companies and shops that had applied for the program.
Both of these developments are moving toward the same goal: to eliminate physical credit cards and cash. If physical credit cards and cash both disappear, accounts will become the only payment method. Banks will have to develop their own mobile accounts and actively win clients to stay competitive.
Alibaba group’s Alipay and WeChat Pay are the dominant digital payment systems in China. They already have 80,000 retailers involved. Vendors, service providers and banks are taking up the digital wallet idea as an option for the customers. Banks must now strive to launch their own mobile credit card, transforming them from being just a card issuer to being a provider of consumer credit, a mobile internet platform and a mobile payment system.”
Shi Wenchao, the CEO of China UnionPay, a Chinese financial services corporation, recently declared that physical banking cards “will soon disappear.” Mobile payments are becoming ubiquitous as the mobile phone has gone far beyond the scope of an instant messaging device.
As digital technology has matured, cashless options have reached critical mass. Increasingly, this will give banks and governments more control over their citizens. It will be very easy for nations of the world and the United Nations to fulfill Bible prophecy when worship laws are imposed on the nations.
“And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” Revelation 13:17.
“I saw all that “would not receive the mark of the Beast, and of his Image, in their foreheads or in their hands,” could not buy or sell. [Revelation 13:15-17.] I saw that the number (666) of the Image Beast was made up; [Revelation 13:18.] and that it was the Beast that changed the Sabbath, and the Image Beast had followed on after, and kept the Pope’s, and not God’s Sabbath. And all we were required to do, was to give up God’s Sabbath, and keep the Pope’s, and then we should have the mark of the Beast, and of his image.” A Word to the Little Flock, page 19.
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