Meal vouchers in Europe What a lunch card programme costs
What a lunch card programme costs
Two numbers, and neither of them is a range designed to look small. Setting the programme up costs 500 euro, once. Each card then costs 1.50 euro a month. There are no transaction fees, no percentage of what your employees spend and no charge that grows with how often they use the card.
The whole price list
| Item | Price | When |
|---|---|---|
| Programme setup | 500 EUR | Once, before launch |
| Each card | 1.50 EUR | Per month |
| Transactions | Nothing | Never |
That is the list. It is short because the model is deliberately simple: you pay to start, you pay for the cards you have in issue, and the meter does not run when anybody buys lunch.
Why no transaction fees matters more than it sounds
A benefit card is used constantly. An employee buys lunch on most working days, so a programme priced per transaction charges you roughly twenty times a month per person, and the busier your benefit is the more it costs you. That is a strange incentive to build into a product whose whole purpose is to be used.
Priced per card, the cost is predictable from headcount alone. You know what next year costs the moment you know how many people will hold a card, and a successful programme where everybody uses the benefit every day costs exactly the same as one where half the cards sit in a drawer.
What this means for a budget conversation. The finance question about a benefit card is usually not the unit price, it is the uncertainty. A per transaction model needs a usage forecast before anybody can approve it. This one needs a headcount, which you already have.
What is included
- Issuing with a licensed partner, virtual and physical cards
- The rules engine that applies your acceptance conditions, ceilings and exclusions
- Processing, balances and the transaction record
- Hosting, PCI DSS and security compliance. The audited environment is the largest hidden cost in building this yourself, and it is not a separate line here
- Scheme certification and the technical launch
What you are not buying separately
No payment licence to obtain, because issuing is delivered with licensed partners across the EU and EEA. No scheme membership to fund and no BIN sponsorship to arrange yourself. No card production line and no processor to procure. Those are the costs that make people assume a card programme is an enterprise project, and none of them lands on you.
What moves the number
How many cards you have in issue. That is the only recurring variable, and it is the one you already know.
Physical cards. Plastic and delivery cost what they cost, so a programme issuing physical cards to everyone is not the same as a virtual first one. Virtual first is also faster to launch.
Anything unusual. A bespoke acceptance model, an integration we have not built before, or a market with conditions nobody has met yet. If your programme needs something outside a standard build, we say so and price it separately rather than hiding it in the monthly figure.
How this compares to running it yourself
The temptation, particularly for a company that already has engineers, is to treat card issuing as a build. The code is the small part. What costs money is the licence, the scheme membership, the certification, the processor relationship and the audited environment that has to be maintained continuously rather than delivered once.
That comparison is worth doing properly before deciding, and choosing a card platform sets out the questions to ask any supplier, including us.
Next
Launching sets out what we deliver and what stays with you, integration covers what your engineers will actually build, and the overview is the short version of all of it.