Edenred, the prepaid service voucher provider,
has launched the first card-based food vouchers on the Belgian
market.

Edenred wants the electronic vouchers, which
have contactless functions, to replace today’s paper-based employee
benefit programme. They will be used to buy food at shops and
restaurants.

Edenred, which is the rebranded name for Accor
Services’ old prepaid division, will issue the cards on behalf of
businesses currently offering the paper vouchers.

“This is quite a prestigious project,” said
Jean-Bernard Trussart, general manager at Edenred Belgium.

“Evidently, we have put great effort on
quality and security, which are of outmost importance for our
customers and their consumers, as well as for the merchants. For
that reason, we banked on Clear2Pay, a company that really masters
the ins and outs of card-based payments.”

Clear2Pay and Edenred have been in
collaboration for the past three years working on the new payment
method. It was successfully piloted in 2009 by Edenred across three
Belgian cities with 950 employees from 15 companies testing the
contactless lunch voucher.