Employee benefits

Lunch vouchers: the future is digital

The lunch voucher is one of the employee’s favourite benefits. In 2018, more than 4 million employees and 140,000 companies will have adopted meal vouchers in France.

Since 2014 with the law governing the dematerialization of meal vouchers, French market players have accelerated their digital transformation. Since then, all these players in the restaurant voucher market have been offering a card that has the advantage of being more convenient to manage and less costly from a logistical point of view. However, paper vouchers are still firmly established in France. For example, Belgium has been offering only digitised vouchers to employees since 2016.

The sector in France had set itself the same objective as Belgium and expects the end of paper by 2022, 2023. We are also seeing strong developments in the restaurant vouchers sector in this direction. The players are offering the use of their digitised card in the so-called X-Pay wallets, which can be used from an NFC smartphone. This is notably the case for the Up group, which digitises its Up Déjeuner card in Apple Pay and G-Pay applications in France, but also in Romania and the Czech Republic. Having lunch vouchers on your smartphone means being able to use them more quickly and securely. In 2018, between 15 and 20% of the 4 million or so employees who will be using them will have a smart card or mobile application.

Reward employees with the digital gift card

Multi-brand and usable online or in-store, the gift card is another appreciated form of employee benefit. A digital gift card has the advantage of offering a more flexible use. 20% of gift cards or vouchers are not used every year. The digital gift card offers an optimal experience reducing the risk of loss or theft.

By choosing a digital gift card service, companies can rely on a simple, fast and secure reward system. For example, One4all Group’s digital gift card service offers companies in the UK and Ireland the opportunity to reward their employees instantly with a digital gift that can be spent immediately.