SFGate - The Last Days of Privacy
The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Within the next four months, a major Bay Area supermarket chain plans to introduce a payment system that uses biometric fingerprint authentication to verify customers' identities. Under this system, shoppers in checkout lines won't need to use cash, checks, debit cards or credit cards. Instead, they can place their fingers on scanners that read fingerprints, and once the device links to their bank or credit card accounts, they can buy groceries, get cash back and do everything else shoppers do.

This report is about a biometric payment technology called Pay By Touch and it also discusses ID theft and the trade-off between privacy and convenience. While this system is not the Biblical "mark of the beast" (Rev 13:16-18) it is a reflection of the wider trend in making payments and identity verification more secure.