Meal vouchers in Europe Titre-restaurant rules in France in 2026
Titre-restaurant rules in France in 2026
A titre-restaurant is capped at 25 EUR of spending per person per day, and the employer contribution is exempt up to 7.32 EUR per title from 1 January 2026. Paper is on a deadline: from 28 February 2027 it can no longer be used to pay. Issuing requires accreditation from the Commission Nationale des Titres-Restaurant, which lists 14 accredited companies.
What is the daily titre-restaurant limit?
25 EUR per person per day. The limit sits on spending, not on the value of the titles an employee holds, and merchants are not allowed to give change.
How much of the employer contribution is exempt?
From 1 January 2026 the employer contribution to the purchase of a titre-restaurant is exempt up to 7.32 EUR per title. The exemption is the whole reason the instrument is cheaper for an employer than the same amount paid as salary, and the ceiling is revised most years, so it is worth checking against the current year rather than assuming.
When do paper titres-restaurant stop being accepted?
This is the change with the hardest deadline in the French market. 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 migration is real work rather than a formality. 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 issuer with paper volume has a fixed window to move it, and any issuer without a card product has a larger problem than a migration.
What can a titre-restaurant buy?
Food, with a boundary that has moved more than once. A derogation allowing any food product to be purchased with a titre-restaurant, rather than only directly consumable meals, was extended by law 2025-56 of 21 January 2025 and runs to 31 December 2026.
Alongside it, three rules settled recently: use on Sundays is open to all employees, use in supermarkets is permanent rather than temporary, and rebates paid back by issuers to employers are prohibited.
How does acceptance work now that the CRT is gone?
The Centrale de Règlement des Titres, the clearing body that used to sit in the middle of paper settlement, no longer exists. Merchants are accredited directly by the CNTR.
Two consequences follow, and both are commercially important.
First, the acceptance network is common to every issuer. A merchant accredited by the CNTR generally accepts all brands, so an employer's choice of issuer does not change where employees can pay. Merchants keep the right to refuse a particular format or a particular issuer, but the default is a shared network.
Second, no special terminal is required. A titre-restaurant card is accepted on an ordinary payment terminal, which removes the hardware barrier that used to protect incumbents.
CONECS and the card networks: two technical routes
France runs two parallel technical models, and confusing them is the most common mistake in this market.
CONECS was created on 10 July 2013 by the historical issuers, and is a dedicated routing and settlement network for dematerialised titres-restaurant. It is separate from the international card networks.
Newer issuers use the international card networks instead. That is the practical proof that an open network model is a legitimate route for a French titre-restaurant, not a workaround. It also explains why an ordinary payment terminal works.
Why this matters if you are designing a programme. The French rules are enforced through merchant accreditation held by the CNTR, not through the choice of card network. So the design question is not which network to join, but how the authorisation decision consults the accredited merchant list. That is covered in how to launch a meal voucher card programme.
Who is accredited to issue titres-restaurant?
The CNTR publishes the list of issuing companies. It covers 14 entries across paper, card and app formats:
| Issuer | Format |
|---|---|
| Benefiz | Card |
| Contakt | Card |
| Coup de Pousse | Card |
| Ekip | Card |
| Glady | Card |
| Kyzpay | Mobile app |
| Pluxee | Paper and card |
| Restoflash | Mobile app |
| Swile | Card |
| Swile, Bimpli products | Paper and card |
| Tickets Restaurant Edenred | Paper and card |
| Up Dejeuner and Up One | Paper and card |
| Wissmile | Card |
| Worklife | Card |
Two things stand out. Ten of the fourteen are card only, which shows how far the market has already moved. And several well known French benefit platforms are absent from the list, because they operate a reimbursement model rather than issuing titres-restaurant, which is a different product under different rules.
Why the reimbursement model is not on this list
Some French platforms give employees a lunch allowance and refund what they spend on their own personal card, rather than issuing a titre-restaurant at all. It is a legitimate product and it avoids accreditation entirely, but it is not the same instrument: the tax treatment, the ceilings and the merchant rules described on this page do not apply to it.
The distinction matters when comparing providers. A platform that reimburses is not competing on the same rules as a platform that issues, and a buyer comparing them side by side is comparing two different things.
What the end of paper means if you issue titres-restaurant
For an accredited issuer, the February 2027 date turns into three separate pieces of work, and they do not run in sequence.
The employee migration is the visible one: everyone still on paper needs a card or an app, activated, before the deadline rather than on it. The employer migration is the harder one, because ordering, funding and payroll reporting all change shape when titles stop being physical objects that arrive in an envelope. And the merchant side mostly takes care of itself, since accreditation is held by the CNTR and an ordinary terminal already accepts the cards.
The uncomfortable arithmetic is that roughly 30 percent of titles were still on paper while about 80 percent of transactions had already moved. The remaining paper is concentrated among the employers and employees least inclined to switch, which is exactly the group that takes longest to move.
How France compares with Italy
The two largest meal voucher markets in Europe took opposite paths, and the contrast is the clearest way to understand the category.
| France | Italy | |
|---|---|---|
| How acceptance is controlled | Merchant accreditation held centrally by the CNTR, shared across issuers | Contract between each issuing company and each merchant it accepts |
| Can a new entrant use international card networks | Yes, and several already do | Yes technically, but acceptance still has to be limited to contracted merchants |
| Merchant commission | Rebates to employers prohibited | Capped at 5 percent |
| Paper | Ends February 2027 | Still permitted, exempt to 4 EUR |
For a programme designer the practical difference is one question: can the acceptance rule be expressed as a list of merchant categories, or does it need to consult a list of named merchants? France mostly allows the first. Italy requires the second.
Every dated change across Europe sits on the 2025 to 2028 calendar. For the stricter model, where the law requires a contract with every accepting merchant, see the Italian rules.