Meal vouchers in Europe Who is allowed to issue meal vouchers in Europe
Who is allowed to issue meal vouchers in Europe
In some European markets anyone can start issuing a meal benefit tomorrow. In others there is a public register of authorised issuers, and being on it is a precondition rather than a formality. This section reprints those registers, because they are the most reliable picture of any national market and nobody has collected them in English.
Which countries gate it, and how
| Country | Gate | Who keeps the list |
|---|---|---|
| Italy | Register, 15 companies | Ministry of Enterprises, under D.Lgs 36/2023 article 131 |
| France | Accreditation, 14 issuers | Commission Nationale des Titres-Restaurant |
| Belgium | Recognition, 5 issuers | FOD Economie |
| Romania | Authorisation per voucher type | Ministry of Finance |
| Bulgaria | Licence plus a share of a national quota | Set in the State Budget Act |
| Everywhere else | None | No register exists |
Bulgaria is the strictest and sits outside this section because its constraint is not really the register. Operators are licensed and then receive an allocation from a national ceiling, so the pot rather than the paperwork is the barrier. Bulgaria covers it.
What a register actually gates
It gates who may put the instrument into an employer's hands. It does not gate who may build the technology underneath, and that distinction is the whole reason this section is useful to two different readers.
If you intend to be the issuer of record, the register is a hard requirement and the application is the first thing to understand. If you intend to supply an issuer, the register is a prospect list, and it is a short one.
Why the lists are short. In a market with a register, the number of companies that can legally sell a meal voucher is fixed and public. Italy has fifteen. France has fourteen. Belgium has five. That is the entire addressable market for anyone selling into those countries, and it is knowable in an afternoon rather than estimated.
Where a new entrant gets in
The registers do move. Belgium recognised Payflip in March 2026, the first new entrant there in over a decade, which is a useful reminder that a closed looking market is not a shut one.
In markets with no register the question is commercial rather than regulatory. Germany, Spain, Poland, Czechia, Austria, Greece, Slovakia, Luxembourg, Croatia and Finland all let anyone start. That does not mean no conditions apply: Greece keeps no register and still requires, by statute, a contract between the issuer and every accepting store.
A register is not the only condition
Whether or not a country lists its issuers, most of them require the voucher to work in a network the issuer has contracted. That requirement, rather than the register, is what decides whether a payment card can carry the benefit at all, and it is covered in acceptance rules and how a meal voucher card works.
The two conditions are independent. A market can have no register and a strict acceptance rule, as Greece does, or a register and a conventional card scheme, as Romania does.
How these lists are kept
Each page reprints the published register with the date it was read and a note of the legal basis. We do not rank the companies on them, comment on their market position or recommend one over another. The lists are here because they are public, useful and hard to find in one place, and that is the extent of it.
For what each market allows the voucher to be worth, see the country rules.