Meal vouchers to become prepaid cards in Romania

Companies that issue meal vouchers, as well as those who are paid via meal vouchers will no longer use the paper -based vouchers, and instead turn to prepaid cards. “Soon, those entitled to meal vouchers will receive those amounts on prepaid cards,” Cosmin Vladimirescu, general manager at Mastercard, told local Economica.net. According to representatives of the payments operator, the law which allows this transformation process is already in force, but specific rules are still needed in order to effectively start the process. “This is an important development not only for the companies that issue vouchers, which will no longer print the tickets and will get rid of a lot of logistical problems related to production and distribution, but also for traders,” said Vladimirescu. Some 2 million employees in Romania benefit from meal vouchers, making the total transactions to go up to over EUR 1 billion. The value of such a voucher is RON 9.35 (some EUR 2.1). Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com