No longer €19, but €25 per day. The daily ceiling for meal vouchers has been increased to help employees cope with inflation.
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VS’is a welcome increase for all employees benefiting from meal vouchers and who regret the measures applied following Covid-19. Unfortunately, the daily ceiling will not go back to 39 euros, as was the case until 1er July, but at 25 euros, from Saturday 1er october. This still represents an increase of 6 euros per day. An increase demanded by many deputies in the context of the parliamentary debate on purchasing power.
Published Friday in the Official Journal, a decree thus modifies “the methods of use of meal vouchers to promote their use, with the increase of the daily ceiling from nineteen euros to twenty-five euros per day”.
“With the inflation observed since the beginning of 2022, the government has decided on a permanent revaluation” of these payment vouchers, “in order to cover the increase in the prices of food products from 1er October,” the economy ministry said in a statement.
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4.8 million employees benefit from meal vouchers
At the end of the first confinement in 2020, the ceiling for using these means of payment had been doubled, from 19 to 38 euros, and its conditions of use had been relaxed – they were accepted even on weekends and public holidays – to support the activity of restaurants hard hit by restrictions linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. 1er July, this daily usage limit was reduced to 19 euros and they could no longer be used on weekends and public holidays. And since 1er September, the maximum exemption ceiling for the employer contribution to the financing of restaurant vouchers was increased by 4%, to reach 5.92 euros.
Distributed by companies to their employees, restaurant vouchers can, since last summer, be used by the latter to do their food shopping, expenses which have increased in recent months due to inflation. And beyond directly edible products (sandwiches, fruit and vegetables, etc.), these vouchers also allow, until the end of December 2023, to purchase food products that are not directly edible (cooking pasta, frozen spinach, etc.). ), recalls Bercy.
Some 700,000 restaurant vouchers are used by 4.8 million employees in 240,000 approved restaurants or bakeries, which represents 6 billion euros per year. Four major historical players, Edenred (Ticket-Restaurant), Groupe Up (Chèque Déjeuner), Sodexo (Pass Restaurant, formerly Chèque Restaurant) and Natixis (Apetiz, formerly Chèque de Table) share this market. But young companies have appeared in recent years, such as Swile, which has experienced ultra-rapid growth with its dematerialized restaurant vouchers in a smart card or a smartphone application.
