I'm late coming back to this question - No VE , not barcodes ,the prediction is far more accurate . "...all.......to be marked on the right hand or the forehead , so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark...."
John was describing a vision , supposing it was a vision of people shopping , today or in the near future ?
The right hand is the contactless payment card ( i know you can use them with your left hand but 90% are right handed and John was describing what he saw )
The forehead is a retinal scan (again , John won't have known what the machine was called , he was just describing what he saw ) How do you think these retinal scanners will work - an operator will hold them in front of your eye ? - of course not - that's too manpower-hungry . You will place your FOREHEAD on a template and the scan will take place .
Retinal scans are not up and running at the moment but they have been invented - you see them on the "technology" pages of mainstream news site , and you see reports of a "cashless society " on mainstream news sites too .
Well , there's a lot of food for thought and a lot of " What If..." in there , but for me the "right hand" part of that prophecy is already up and running .
All the best everyone (and keep using cash ) .