Japan is testing a new system of cashless payments for foreign tourists. Once the tourist has pre-registered his fingerprints and credit cards or other forms of payment with the government database he can use his fingerprints to verify his identity and make payments at shops, hotels, and at the airport. This would eliminate the need to carry a lot of credit cards and would be a substitute to showing a passport to a hotel. The system is also touted on the basis that it would help prevent crime.
Japan hopes that the two-finger system is being tried at over 300 souvenir shops, restaurants, hotels and other establishments in popular tourist areas. The government will gradually expand the experiment until it will be in place nationwide in time for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2020.
The new identity and payments system is part of the government’s efforts to increase the annual number of foreign tourists to 40 million by 2020.
Data concerning how and where foreign tourists use the system will be converted by anonymous “big data” and analyzed for spending habits and can then be used to devise policies on tourism and management strategies for the tourism industry.
Similar systems are already being tried at theme parks and some banks to eliminate the use of cash cards.
“The system is also superior in the area of security, such as preventing people from impersonating our customers,” an official from Aeon bank said.
Cashless payments are essential to controlling the economy and placing sanctions on God’s people as described in Revelation 13:16, 17.
“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 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.”
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