End clap announced for the paper meal ticket. One of the fellow travelers of hundreds of thousands of employees, who use them every day to pay for their meals, will disappear, announced this Monday morning the Minister Delegate in charge of Consumption. Objective: to replace this aging object that more and more professionals refuse by a dematerialized solution.
Since the end of February, restaurateurs and merchants who collect paper meal vouchers must process them themselves, then send them directly to one of the issuing organizations, such as Edenred, and be reimbursed. A change inducing an overload of work for professionals. Previously, they sent the securities to the Central Securities Settlement Office, which then took over the administrative part. They are therefore more and more numerous to no longer accept these products, too complex to manage: "A quarter of restaurants and shops refuse them," said Olivia Grégoire, at the microphone of Franceinfo, pointing in particular to "too heavy procedures". In addition, large commissions levied make this scheme unattractive for institutions.
The government will therefore launch the "dematerialization of meal tickets", which will soon all have to be in card format or 100% virtual. The executive wants to have completed this transition "before 2026", promising to support companies that still depend on paper securities. "We will also support employees [...]. It is to simplify, to ensure that it costs less to the restaurateur to take the restaurant tickets, "justified the minister delegate.
See alsoSodexo cuts itself in two to better value its restaurant vouchers
Investigation by the Autorité de la concurrence
The executive will therefore exchange with representatives of companies, and in particular SMEs, in order to identify the sticking points. For their part, the giants of the sector already support dematerialization: "It is clear that since the launch of the restaurant voucher card and then dematerialized version, the paper title is less popular," notes Edenred, on its website.
At the same time, the government is also awaiting the results of an investigation by the Competition Authority into the meal voucher market, to determine whether it is "fair". In the event of a proven malfunction, the government threatens to cap the commissions levied by the organizations, currently set between 3% and 5%. In case of problems, "we will cap them rather on the floor than on the ceiling," warned Olivia Grégoire. So many points that will closely scrutinize the nearly five million employees who use these titles on a daily basis.
