More than 22 million Brazilian workers will be directly affected by a change taking effect in November: meal voucher (VR) and food voucher (VA) cards will be accepted at any card terminal, regardless of the provider. The confirmation came from the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE), in statements sent to the newspaper Extra and to R7.
In practice, workers will no longer be locked into the merchant network of the card company their employer chose. If the cheapest restaurant in the neighborhood only has a terminal from one specific provider, that stops being a problem: any company's card should work there, widening freedom of choice when paying for lunch or the monthly grocery run.
How it works
The change has a technical name: full interoperability, the system that lets one company's card be read by another company's terminal, as already happens with regular debit and credit cards. Implementation had a 360-day deadline counted from Decree nº 12.712/2025, which overhauled the Worker Food Program (PAT), a federal scheme that gives tax breaks to companies that feed their employees, in November of last year. That deadline expires next month.
"In practice, it means allowing VA and VR cards to be accepted across different capture networks, without being limited to the specific infrastructure of a given operator," the ministry said in a statement.
Rules already in force
Other changes from the decree have been in effect since February 11. The main one is a 3.6% cap on the fee charged to restaurants and supermarkets by card operators: for every R$ 100 paid with the benefit, at most R$ 3.60 stays with the card company. Within that limit, the interchange fee, the amount passed between operators, cannot exceed 2%, and any additional charge was banned.
The deadline for merchants to receive the money was also cut in half, from 30 to 15 calendar days. For a small bar or restaurant that pays suppliers and rent out of the month's revenue, getting paid in two weeks instead of a month eases cash flow.
The decree also banned the so-called "rebate", a discount operators offered to win contracts with big employers and offset through higher fees on restaurants. And it ordered the opening of payment arrangements with more than 500,000 users, a stage whose deadline ended in May.
According to R7, card companies say they are waiting for regulation detailing the norms, rules and operating systems of the new model. The government says the package aims to increase competition in the sector, cut costs and give workers more freedom of choice. The decree kept the benefit restricted to food purchases, ruling out spending on gyms, pharmacies or health plans.