Payment industry enters final phase of adopting exclusive 'rail' for meal vouchers

By André Marinho São Paulo, 24/10/2025 - The payment industry in Brazil is preparing for the most intensive phase of the implementation of the "voucher rail," the financial architecture that provides a new technical pathway for processing benefits such as meal vouchers, food vouchers, and cultural vouchers. The instrument creates a new route through which the transaction will be transmitted along the chain—in practice, a third "box" or "pipeline" beyond the already traditional credit and debit. Starting next Monday, 3, merchants will need to have the "voucher" option enabled on their machines to accept the benefits. Payments associated with the Worker Food Program (PAT) with Elo, Mastercard, and Visa cards will travel exclusively through this route and may be denied if used in credit or debit. For retailers using the Point of Sale (POS, the physical machines) model, the update will depend only on the acquiring company and the retailer. In the case of Electronic Fund Transfer (TEF, ...