I have often seen many entrepreneurs offer their product or service as a mode of payment. I read an interesting story in this blog by Waqas, CEO of Markhor and Atoms. He traded 15 pair of shoes to get hold of a Twitter handle for his company.
I think that he certainly stood a better chance of acquiring that twitter handle with an interesting offer of 15 shoes instead of cash. Moreover, by paying with his product, he delivered more value and incurred lesser cost.
In e-commerce, most business owners pay influencers with their products. The influencers in turn review the products and get to keep them for free. The business owners get UGC (user-generated content) that they may use on social media and in their ads. In addition business owners receive content-distribution as the influencers review the products for the followers. The large influencers also receive store credit as a form of payment in addition to free products. The influencers receive higher value (e.g $99 goods if they had to buy), while the businesses incur lesser costs (e.g $30 cost of goods).
Product as a currency works and is a preferred mode of payment for modern businesses.