Not the edible variety but electronic chips. In Amsterdam a chipkaart enables you to use the metro, trams buses and trains. You load lots of euros onto the card and it gets subtracted each journey you make. It feels like traveling for free and it’s only when you have to recharge your card that you’re reminded it isn’t. In the Student Hotel you are given a round blue key fob. You don’t need a real key as the chip inside it opens the doors from the public area and the door to your bedroom. To buy anything at the hotel’s restaurant (called The Kitchen!), you can only use a debit or credit card – chips again. You can buy edible chips but only by using an electronic chip. And to go back to where I started (or just to keep on traveling), you need the chip in your debit or credit card to recharge your chipkaart.
Chips may make life easier. That is until your bank takes the money from your account.
– Simon