Meal vouchers: where to use them in 2026

Any merchant wishing to accept meal vouchers must first obtain CNTR accreditation, the body that has regulated the sector since 1967. Accreditation classifies the establishment as a food service provider : it covers traditional restaurants, snack bars and fast food chains, as well as food retailers (bakeries, caterers, greengrocers, delicatessens), provided they sell food items intended for immediate consumption^[6]. The accredited network currently comprises around 248,000 establishments across France^[1], providing sufficient coverage for most employment zones, including urban peripheries.

On the employee side, usage is governed by a daily cap of €25, raised from €19 to €25 on 1 October 2022 and maintained since^[2]. Only one voucher may be used per working day ; Sundays, public holidays and days of leave are excluded. In practice, virtually all payments now go through the Conecs system, which digitises all cards (Swile, Edenred, Pluxee, Up, Bimpli) and allows a merchant to accept all five with a single terminal configuration. This interoperability has eliminated the infamous "sorry, we don't accept your card" situation : on the standard CNTR network, an accredited establishment accepts all cards in principle.

Traditional restaurants remain the natural home of the meal voucher. Brasseries, neighbourhood restaurants, bistro chains, private corporate canteens : all can apply for CNTR accreditation, and most establishments frequented by working adults hold it. Bakeries are playing an increasingly central role in the working lunch : sandwiches, salads as well as takeaway meal deals make them full-fledged food service points, and artisan bakers can apply for accreditation online through the CNTR^[7]. For a time-pressed employee or one on a hybrid working schedule, the local bakery is often a better option than a sit-down restaurant.

Fast food chains also accept meal vouchers, with one rule to bear in mind : usage is capped at €25 per day, excluding Sundays and public holidays. McDonald's, for example, accepts digital meal vouchers up to this cap and states on its website that non-working days are excluded, in line with the CNTR framework^[8]. Burger King, Quick, KFC and sandwich chains (Subway, Exki) operate on the same basis. The voucher covers a meal ; it does not fund a family order exceeding €25 paid in one transaction.

There remains a grey area well known to HR managers : items not ready for immediate consumption. Without the exemption, a meal voucher should only be used to purchase ready-to-eat food. This rule, revisited every time the supermarket exemption is at risk of expiry, explains why legislators have had to intervene repeatedly to extend the use of vouchers to grocery purchases.

This is the most closely watched aspect of the issue. Since the health crisis, an exemption has allowed the purchase of any food product at supermarkets — including items not ready for immediate consumption : pasta, rice, tinned goods, raw fruit and vegetables, fresh produce. Without an extension, this provision would have lapsed at end-2024. Law No. 2025-56 of 21 January 2025 extends it until 31 December 2026, published in the Official Journal on 22 January 2025^[3][9]. In practical terms, your employees can use their card for food shopping throughout 2026.

Two limits apply : the €25 daily cap also applies at supermarkets, and only food products are eligible: alcohol, cleaning products, household appliances and press are excluded. The till receipt therefore separates eligible food items from the rest ; most major chains (Carrefour, Auchan, Leclerc, Lidl, Intermarché) configure their checkouts to split eligible from non-eligible items automatically. From an HR management perspective, this exemption carries a hidden cost : it perpetuates ambiguity about the long-term stability of the grocery benefit, and several issuers are advocating for a permanent legislative basis rather than annual renewals.

Delivery platforms have established themselves as a channel in their own right, particularly for employees working from home or on the go. The rule : a meal voucher can be used to pay for a delivery order provided the restaurant holds CNTR accreditation — which is the case for the vast majority of merchants listed on Uber Eats and Deliveroo. Pluxee (formerly Sodexo) signed a global partnership with Uber Eats in 2021 covering around 22,000 restaurants and merchants in France^[4], and its card also works on Deliveroo^[5].

Other issuers have followed suit. Swile is accepted on Deliveroo within the €25 daily cap^[10] ; Edenred (Ticket Restaurant), UpDéjeuner and Bimpli are also listed on Uber Eats, which allows filtering restaurants by accepted card type. One limitation remains : the delivery driver's tip cannot be paid with a meal voucher, nor can delivery fees beyond the meal amount — a second payment method is therefore required. For companies with an active remote-working policy, foodtech coverage has become just as important a selection criterion as the density of bakeries near the office.

On paper, no : since the CNTR network is shared, an accredited merchant accepts all five cards. In practice, nuances exist. Edenred (Ticket Restaurant) and Bimpli communicate the broadest networks — Edenred claims around 265,000 to 300,000 merchants and outlets in France^[11], Bimpli around 220,000 restaurants and food retailers^[12]. Pluxee draws on its Uber Eats partnership to strengthen delivery coverage^[4]. UpDéjeuner focuses on local and neighbourhood commerce.

Swile, acquired by Edenred in 2023 but operated independently, stands out less for the breadth of its network than for its app experience : geolocation of accepting merchants, contactless payment via Apple Pay and Google Pay, collaborative group pots for team lunches. For an employee, the real difference lies in the app — the ability to find an accepting bakery in two seconds, rather than in the exhaustive list of accredited establishments. Before signing with an issuer, the useful reflex is to test the application around your main office locations and check merchant density in the neighbourhoods where your teams actually eat.

Acceptance network coverage is just one dimension of benefit management. Once the question of where to use a meal voucher is settled, the next step is choosing an issuer on total cost, payroll integration and application quality. Our Greenway meal voucher card follows this logic : a single card for all professional uses, accepted across the entire CNTR network, with native spend reporting and a 1% cashback on every transaction donated to the 1%ForAll® programme of the Greenway Foundation. For a detailed market comparison, the 2026 comparison of the leading meal voucher cards reviews pricing, URSSAF exemptions and selection criteria.

The meal voucher also makes most sense when it sits within a coherent employee benefits policy. For a broader view of benefits management and employee engagement, our employee benefits and engagement white paper shows how to integrate meals, mobility as well as CSR on a single platform — rather than stacking suppliers and statements.