The Bar Code's High-Tech Sibling.

September 15, 2001

Soon McDonald's customers in the Chicago area will be able to use a smart key chain to pay for their French fries in a wireless, cashless transaction. Five million people are already using the smart key chains to buy gasoline at ExxonMobil stations.

The devices use radio frequency identification (RFID), an old technology with a new price tag: it recently dropped from several dollars apiece to about 20 cents. The radio tags can send data, like the cost of a purchase, to a transmitter located a few feet away.

"Everyday objects can be made intelligent," says Glover Ferguson, chief scientist at the consulting firm Accenture, which, like Texas Instruments and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is looking for even more ways to use smart tags.

Currently, RFID is being used on the shoelaces of Boston Marathon runners, on trash cans in Barcelona, on readers of utility meters in Maine, and on vehicles in Singapore, which charges an entrance fee to drive in its central business district.

Other entrepreneurs are finding industrial uses for the radio chips. Systems Automation Technology in Houston is using smart tags to track assets for companies that manufacture goods; its clients include Chevron and Shell. It recently landed $3.2 million from the venture capital firm Genesis Park in a second round of funding. Two other venture-funded companies, 2Scoot and FreedomPay, are racing to create networks of retail outlets that use the key chains and to build a sizable base of users.

For now, it's just good to know that fast food at McDonald's is getting even faster.

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