Popular lunch voucher system to be revamped in France

Lunch vouchers regularly top polls of the staff benefit most appreciated by French workers – even beating a company car – but changes are afoot.

The cost of the vouchers, called tickets restaurant or titres-restaurant, is shared between the employer, who pays between 50% and 60% of its value, and the employee, who pays the rest.

The big advantage for both is that employers can, in 2024, pay up to €7.18 per voucher without any of the payroll taxes and social security contributions which are attached to normal pay.

Workplaces using the scheme issue one voucher for each full day worked. Employers decide the daily value of the vouchers, but staff can save them up and use as many of them as they wish at any one time within set limits.

Originally meant to be used in restaurants only, the vouchers extended into fast food outlets and supermarket chiller cabinets filled with ready meals.

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Vouchers can be used for groceries

Since Covid, the list of items that can be bought with meal vouchers has enlarged further to include food products that require cooking, such as pasta, rice, fish and meat.

The big four suppliers of lunch vouchers in France – Edenred, Up, Natixis Intertitres and Sodexo – were fined €440 million in 2019 for collusion, and are now more aggressive in trying to win business. They are also facing more competition from start-ups.

One of these, Swile, was profitable for the first time in the first half of 2024 and is looking to add to the 5.5 million workers, mainly in France, who use its card-based system.

Its entry to the market has accelerated government plans to ban the traditional cheque-book style lunch vouchers for card-only and mobile-phone based systems, and the switch to digital must be completed by the end of 2025, the government has said.

Cards are easier for restaurants to handle and should allow greater clarity on the commissions charged by card suppliers.

Many workplaces have already switched to card-based vouchers, but the change means that temporary and seasonal workers, who were often given individual vouchers, will now have to be given a card or do without.