From March 1, 2024, meal vouchers for 2023 are officially expired. But all is not lost, with this approach which allows you to recover the money from unused tickets.
It is part of the French people’s favorite social benefit, nearly 4 million of them benefit from it thanks to their work, it is of course the meal voucher. In general, during lunch time, employees draw their meal vouchers to pay for their meal or some food shopping. The employer is not obliged to provide one, but if he decides to do so, he must cover 50% to 60% of the value of the ticket, the rest being for the employees. People who benefit from it each month receive their meal vouchers, either in paper format or directly via a transfer to their dedicated card. The amount varies depending on the financial contribution of employers, but on average, the maximum value of a meal voucher in 2024 is 14.36 euros (if the employer share is 50%). And since October 1, 2022, the ceiling for using meal vouchers has been limited to 25 euros per day.
A tidy sum that would help more than one person, especially in these times when inflation is high. And yet, each year, around 700 million euros in meal vouchers are not spent. Or more than 145 euros per employee per year, due to the deadline for using the titles.
If you benefit from them, you probably know that restaurant vouchers have a certain validity period. It is 14 months for paper titles and for the dematerialized version. After the deadline, the balance is in principle expired. Unless you take matters into your own hands quickly. Indeed, it is possible to recover “lost” money.
For 2023 meal vouchers in paper format, which expired on March 1, 2024, you have approximately two weeks to ask your company’s human resources department to exchange your expired tickets for new ones. The employer will then have until March 31 to return them to the organization in question. As for people who have a meal ticket card, you don’t have to do anything, “upon expiration, the securities loaded in year N are automatically exchanged for securities from Year N+1”, explains the Edenred website.