2 Pound Luncheon Voucher; Edenred

Luncheon vouchers in the UK date to the 1950s, when the government introduced a tax exemption allowing employers to provide subsidised meals to workers — a benefit specifically designed around wartime food policy that simply never got repealed. Edenred, formerly the voucher division of Accor, became the dominant issuer after acquiring the original Luncheon Voucher brand. By 2018 the paper format was already in managed decline, with most volume migrating to the Ticket Restaurant card scheme.

The embedded micro-fibres are a late-period addition to a product whose physical security was historically minimal — counterfeiting luncheon vouchers was once remarkably common, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s.