Meal vouchers in Europe Meal voucher rule changes in Europe, 2025 to 2028
Meal voucher rule changes in Europe, 2025 to 2028
European meal voucher rules are changing faster now than at any point since the schemes moved from paper to cards. Italy capped what an issuer may charge a shop. France is ending paper vouchers. Belgium set a new ceiling and admitted its first new issuer in over a decade. This page lists every dated change we can source, and says plainly which ones are settled and which are still proposals.
The calendar
| Effective | Market | What changes | Who it affects |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 January 2023 | Slovakia | Meal vouchers must be issued electronically, with a narrow exception where an electronic voucher cannot be used at or near the workplace | Issuers, employers |
| 1 July 2024 | Bulgaria | Transition from paper to electronic food vouchers completes, after a six month changeover | Issuers, employers, food retail |
| 1 January 2025 | Luxembourg | Paper cheques-repas can no longer be issued. The digital regime began a year earlier, alongside a face value rise from 10.80 to 15 EUR | Issuers, employers |
| 1 December 2025 | Hungary | Cold food in supermarkets becomes payable with a SZEP card, by government regulation, with an end date attached | Issuers, food retail, employees |
| 1 January 2026 | Bulgaria | Euro adopted. The 200 BGN monthly limit converts to 102.26 EUR without being raised, and the national quota is carried over unchanged | Employers, employees, issuers |
| 1 September 2025 | Italy | Commission an issuer may charge an accepting merchant capped at 5 percent, for newly issued vouchers | Issuers, food retail, hospitality |
| 1 January 2026 | Italy | The 5 percent cap applies across the whole market | Issuers, food retail, hospitality |
| 1 January 2026 | Italy | Tax exempt value of an electronic voucher rises from 8 to 10 EUR per day. Paper stays at 4 EUR | Employers, employees |
| 1 January 2026 | Belgium | Maximum meal voucher value of 10 EUR per working day, with the employer share capped at 8.91 EUR | Employers, issuers |
| 1 January 2026 | France | Employer contribution exempt up to 7.32 EUR per title | Employers |
| March 2026 | Belgium | Payflip recognised as an official meal voucher issuer, the first new entrant in over a decade | Employers, competitors |
| 17 March 2026 | Italy | The competition authority opens investigation A578 into the market leader over alleged abuse of a dominant position | Issuers, food retail |
| 30 April 2026 | Hungary | The cold food window closes. From 1 May the SZEP card works only at hot kitchen catering establishments | Issuers, food retail, employees |
| 1 October 2026 | Romania | The 45 RON daily ceiling is reindexed under the mechanism in law 165/2018 | Employers, issuers |
| 31 December 2026 | France | The derogation allowing any food product to be bought with a titre-restaurant expires | Employees, food retail |
| 28 February 2027 | France | Paper titres-restaurant can no longer be used to pay. Issuers stop distributing them from around 1 March 2027 | Issuers, employers, food retail |
| Around 2028 | European Union | The revised payment services rules take effect, keeping the limited network exclusion but narrowing it | Issuers |
Hungary changed what the card buys, twice, in five months
Two of the dates above are the same instrument in the same country, switched on and then off. Cold food in supermarkets became payable with a SZEP card on 1 December 2025 and stopped on 30 April 2026. Nothing about the card changed on either date, and neither did the merchants. A regulation changed which of them were permitted.
It is the shortest illustration on this site of why acceptance scope belongs in a rule a programme can edit rather than in the product. Every other entry on this calendar is the same thing happening more slowly.
Paper is ending country by country, not all at once
Four of the dates above are the same event in different places. Belgium finished with paper in 2016, Slovakia made electronic vouchers the rule in 2023, Bulgaria completed its changeover in mid 2024, Luxembourg stopped issuing paper at the end of 2024, and France reaches the same point in February 2027.
Read as a list they look like five national decisions. Read as a sequence they are one direction, and the countries still permitting paper are the exception rather than the norm. An issuer planning for a market that has not yet set a date is planning for a date that has not been announced, not for its absence.
Italy: what the 5 percent commission cap actually caps
The cap sits on the commission an issuing company charges a merchant that accepts its vouchers. It does not touch what the employer pays, and it does not touch the value the employee receives. Only the contractual relationship between issuer and shop changes.
The reason it happened is arithmetic. EuroCommerce put acceptance costs in Italy and Portugal at between 5 and 20 percent of sales value, against food retail margins of 1 to 3 percent. At the top of that range, accepting a voucher cost a supermarket more than the sale earned.
The rule arrived in stages. From 1 September 2025 it applied to newly issued vouchers, and vouchers issued under the old terms stayed valid to the end of that year. From 1 January 2026 it covers the market. Full detail is on the Italian rules page.
France: what happens to paper titres-restaurant
Paper is being retired on a fixed date rather than allowed to fade. From 28 February 2027 a paper titre-restaurant can no longer be used to pay, and issuers stop distributing them from around 1 March 2027.
The volume still to move is not trivial. According to the CNTR roughly 30 percent of titles were still on paper, even though about 80 percent of transactions already ran on a card or an app during 2025. Every French issuer therefore has a migration to run inside a fixed window, and any issuer without a card product has a bigger problem than a migration.
Two related changes landed alongside it: use on Sundays is now open to all employees, use in supermarkets is settled rather than temporary, and rebates paid back by issuers to employers are prohibited. The French rules page covers the acceptance mechanics.
Belgium: the ceiling and the fourth issuer
Belgium has been card only for a decade. Paper meal vouchers have not been issued since 2015 and have not been accepted since 2016, which makes it the cleanest example of a fully dematerialised scheme in Europe.
From 1 January 2026 the maximum voucher value is 10 EUR per working day, of which the employer may fund up to 8.91 EUR. Separately, in March 2026 the FOD Economie recognised Payflip as an official issuer, taking the register to five. That is the first new name in over a decade in a market that had settled into three.
Does the payment services review bring meal vouchers into interchange regulation?
Not on the current text, and this is worth stating carefully because it is frequently reported the other way round.
Meal vouchers sit outside interchange regulation today because of a specific exemption: it covers instruments valid in a single member state, provided at the request of an employer or public body, regulated by a national authority for a social or tax purpose, and usable at suppliers holding a commercial agreement with the issuer. That is the legal reason affiliated merchant networks exist.
The revised European payment services rules reached political agreement on 27 November 2025 and were endorsed by member state representatives on 23 April 2026. The limited network exclusion survives, but it is narrowed: an instrument now has to be usable within a single limited network rather than the broader wording used before. Meal vouchers are not named in the agreed text.
What that means in practice. Retailers, through EuroCommerce, have asked for the category to be treated like any other regulated consumer payment instrument, estimating that it would cut acceptance costs by 80 to 90 percent. That is a lobbying position, not law. Anyone telling you the exemption has been removed is describing something that has not happened.
How this page is maintained
Every entry carries the date a rule takes effect and the market it applies to. Announcements without an effective date are not listed. Proposals are marked as proposals. The page is reviewed quarterly and after any national budget law that touches voucher ceilings, since those are the changes that move most often.
If a figure here is out of date, it is a mistake rather than a rounding: tell us and we will correct it.