Compensation. What one offers another in trade for goods or services. Most often today, it’s money. That is, I pay the service station money in exchange for gasoline. Or, I pay the tavern in cash in exchange for beer.
Occasionally, the compensation may be something besides money. Then it becomes a sort of barter. One party trades a good or service in exchange for another; wheat for milk. Dental work for electrical work. Whatever.
Another example is health care. Rather than our employer compensating us in cash, they instead compensate us in insurance.*
Imagine, if you will, if our employer compensated us in groceries rather than cash–just like health insurance. What would our world look like?