I was driving back from Milwaukee yesterday listening to a station from Chicago. An entreprenuer is trying a new service where you can pre-pay for drinks from participating bar using "Bar Bux". These are purchased from their site (www.barbux.com) at a discount and given to the bar. They are using what looks like chips for this.

Its really a way of gathering marketing information on their website and through the use of the Bar Bux. The release said there is a circuit embedded in the chip to track where it was spent. Not a big fan of that, but if you sign up you get 6 chips.

http://www.barbux.com/intro.asp?nav_id=32
http://www.barbux.com/store/listcategoriesandproducts.asp?idCategory=2