La French Tech ensures and far from the dominance of Edenred and Sodexo, the restaurant voucher market in France has become ultra-competitive. After Swile (13% of the market) and its cards with lots of advantages, a new nugget has arrived and is not afraid to try to make its mark.
It must be said that its co-founders are already part of the community, they tell the newspaper Les Echos. Starting from the company Up, which offers its own ticket-restaurant solution, Catherine Coupet and Jacques-Yves Harscouët went freelance to solve problems that persisted in the sector.
Say goodbye to tickets, checks and restaurant cards
Their solution is called Open!Eat and has already raised funds. To enter the market, it offers fully dematerialized solutions. Neither paper nor payment card in Mastercard or Visa format are available, unlike competitors.
By relying on open banking and partnerships with fintechs, Open!Eat has automated its solution. After payment by his own card, the customer whose employer has subscribed to the startup's offer will automatically be reimbursed to his bank account.
Open!Eat told Les Echos that they could automatically make transfers after customers' meal payments thanks to Bridge, a service from French fintech Bankin'. Open banking allows access to account data without barriers, so the solution has no problem detecting when a card transaction for a meal has taken place.
To employers, Opea!Eat sells itself on its site by explaining the advantage of its offer: “you only pay for what has actually been consumed by your employees. And when it is estimated that around 10% of restaurant vouchers are not used… that changes the situation!”
For security and for the device to work well, a team is in charge of manually checking certain transactions on which the processing software would have doubts. On the price side, employers will have to pay between 5 and 6 euros per month per employee. The commission for restaurateurs is 1.5% (it is 3.5% at Swile).
Competitive in its prices, the solution was able to be so thanks to its entirely dematerialized model. Without going into too much detail, its co-founders explained to the French economic daily that in the absence of the issuance of restaurant tickets, they did not have to meet the same requirements as other players with the National Restaurant Voucher Commission ( CNTR).
The Swile card, in the hands of 500,000 employees in France © Presse-citron
Swile ahead
Like its competitors, Open!Eat says it's aimed at all businesses and employers. Recently, its competitor Swile signed with its first CAC40 company, the Casino group, to equip all of its employees. In all, 500,000 French employees are now users of the Mastercard from the French unicorn, which recently raised 200 million euros to become the 19th French unicorn.
With a big lead over Open!Eat, Swile is now looking to move to Mexico and Brazil. Its services go beyond the simple restaurant ticket, something that is not yet available at Open!Eat.
