Meal voucher payments in Brazil

Under the Worker Food Program (Programa de Alimentação do Trabalhador) known as PAT, many workers in Brazil receive meal and food vouchers as an employee benefit. PAT vouchers are digital or physical prepaid benefit cards that are loaded with new funds each month by the employer. These cards can be co-branded with a credit or debit card.

With Adyen terminals you can accept all major brands of PAT vouchers in a fully compliant way, regardless of whether you have a contract with the issuer of the voucher. There is no need to have separate terminals for different voucher brands.

This page describes how you can accept Brazilian meal and food vouchers, either using a UI provided by Adyen or by creating your own UI and implementing an additional field in your Terminal API requests.

Requirements

Before you begin, take into account the following requirements, limitations, and preparations.

Ways to accept meal vouchers

To accept meal and food voucher payments, you can use the following flows:

• Adyen UI
  With this flow enabled, the terminal automatically shows a screen that lets the customer select if they want to make a credit, debit, or voucher payment. After selecting voucher, the customer taps, inserts, or swipes the meal or food voucher card to make the payment. This flow works for integrated and standalone payment terminals.

• Your own UI
  You use your own custom POS UI or some other process to let the customer indicate they want to make a credit, debit, or voucher payment. You then send a Terminal API payment request specifying the chosen payment type as the selectedAccountType, in this case with a value of MEAL_VOUCHER. On the terminal, the customer then taps, inserts, or swipes the meal or food voucher card to make the payment.

Standalone payment terminals only support the Adyen UI flow. If your Adyen terminals are integrated with your POS system, you can use either flow.

Note that if the balance on a voucher is not enough for the amount due, the transaction is refused in both flows.

Adyen UI

To use the Adyen UI flow, you must contact our Support Team and let them know whether you want this to be enabled for a company or merchant account, a store, or a terminal. The Adyen UI flow works for integrated and standalone payment terminals.

When enabled, the flow is as follows:

1. You initiate a payment like you usually do.

2. The terminal asks the customer to choose if they want to pay by credit, debit, or voucher.

   

3. If the shopper selects voucher, the terminal asks the customer to tap, insert, or swipe.

   For information about the flow if the shopper selects credit or debit, see Installments in Brazil.

4. The customer presents their voucher card to the terminal and completes the payment. If the payment amount is above the CVM limit, the customer may need to enter their PIN.

On an integrated terminal, when the voucher payment succeeds, the Terminal API AdditionalResponse includes:

• fundingSource=PREPAID.
• The voucher brand used for the payment, for example, paymentMethodVariant=elo_voucher_br.

Your own UI

As an alternative to the Ayden UI, you can design your own custom UI to collect the customer's preference. Your Terminal API request then needs to flag the transaction as a meal voucher payment. This flow does not apply to standalone terminals.

The flow at the point of sale is as follows:

1. You collect the information about whether the customer wants to pay by voucher. You can do this in various ways, for example:
   • Your store staff asks the customer.
   • You collect the customer's preference on a secondary screen, for instance a tablet.
   • You use input requests to collect the customer's preference on the payment terminal.
2. You use logic to pass the collected information to your POS app, or your store staff enters this information manually into your POS app.
3. Your POS app passes this information to the payment request.
4. The customer presents their voucher card to the terminal and completes the payment.

When the transaction is approved, you receive a response containing the voucher brand used for the payment.

Make a meal voucher payment

If the customer has indicated they want to pay with a meal or food voucher:

1. Create a JSON object consisting of the selectedAccountType parameter with the value MEAL_VOUCHER.

   See Interaction with installment parameters for more information.

2. Encode the JSON object to Base64. You will pass the resulting string in SaleData.SaleToPOIData.

3. Make a payment request, specifying:

   • The standard SaleToPOIRequest.MessageHeader object, with MessageClass set to Service and MessageCategory set to Payment.

     Parameter	Required	Description
     ProtocolVersion		3.0
     MessageClass		Service
     MessageCategory		Payment
     MessageType		Request
     ServiceID		Your unique ID for this request, consisting of 1-10 alphanumeric characters. Must be unique within the last 48 hours for the terminal (POIID) being used.
     SaleID		Your unique ID for the POS system component to send this request from.
     POIID		The unique ID of the terminal to send this request to. Format: [device model]-[serial number].

   • The PaymentRequest object with:

     Parameter	Required	Description
     PaymentTransaction.AmountsReq		An object with: Currency: the transaction currency. RequestedAmount: the final transaction amount.
     SaleData.SaleToPOIData		Your Base64-encoded JSON object.
     SaleData.SaleTransactionID		An object with: TransactionID: your reference to identify a payment. We recommend using a unique value per payment. In your Customer Area and Adyen reports, this shows as the merchant reference for the transaction. TimeStamp: the date and time of the request in UTC format.

4. In the PaymentResponse, check the AdditionalResponse. For a successful voucher payment, this includes:

   • fundingSource=PREPAID.
   • The voucher brand used for the payment, for example, paymentMethodVariant=elo_voucher_br.

Interaction with installment parameters

As described under Make a meal voucher payment, a meal or food voucher Terminal API payment request must include the selectedAccountType parameter with a value of MEAL_VOUCHER. Other allowed values are:

• CHEQUE to make a debit card payment.
• CREDIT to make a credit card payment.

If you also accept installments in Brazil, the Terminal API payment request needs to indicate if the transaction is a debit or credit payment. Depending on your implementation, your code can use the selectedAccountType parameter to do this, or use the TransactionConditions.DebitPreferredFlag parameter with a value of true for debit or false for credit.

If both DebitPreferredFlag and selectedAccountType (in Base64-encoded format) are included in a payment request, the selectedAccountType parameter takes precedence and its value is applied.

Testing

You can test voucher payments using Manual Key Entry (MKE). This does not simulate the voucher flow on the terminal, but does enable you to test how your integration and reconciliation handle voucher payments.

During MKE, enter a combination of card number, expiry date, and CVC as indicated in the following table:

Testing voucher payments with a physical card is possible for Visa voucher cards; contact Visa to get a test card.

Merchant Category Codes

To be allowed to accept meal and food voucher payments under the PAT program, your business must comply with certain rules. To mention a few:

• Your business must be registered with a National Classification of Economic Activities (CNAE) code that indicates your main economic activity is compatible with meal or food services.
• When you accept PAT vouchers, you are technically part of a public health program, and must adhere to all applicable sanitary and nutritional regulations.

• Your Merchant Category Code (MCC) must be one of the following.

  Category	MCC Code	MCC Description
  Food	5300	Wholesale Clubs
  Food	5411	Grocery Stores / Supermarkets
  Food	5422	Freezer / Meat Lockers
  Food	5441	Candy Stores
  Food	5451	Dairy Product Stores
  Food	5462	Bakeries
  Food	5499	Miscellaneous Food Stores (Default)
  Food	5811	Caterers / Food Distributors
  Culture	4722	Travel Agencies
  Culture	5311	Department Stores
  Culture	5733	Musical Instrument Stores
  Culture	5735	Record Stores
  Culture	5815	Digital Audiovisual Products
  Culture	5932	Antique Shops
  Culture	5942	Bookstores
  Culture	5943	Stationery Stores
  Culture	5994	Newsstands / News Providers
  Culture	7832	Cinemas / Motion Picture Production
  Culture	7841	Video Stores
  Culture	7911	Dance Studios, Schools, and Halls
  Culture	7922	Theaters, Theatrical Productions, and Shows
  Culture	7929	Bands, Orchestras, Misc. Entertainers
  Culture	7991	Tourist Attractions and Exhibits
  Culture	7996	Amusement Parks, Circuses, etc.
  Culture	7998	Aquariums and Zoos
  Culture	8699	Cultural, Union & Other Unclassified Associations
  Culture	9399	Government Services (Default)
  Meal	5812	Restaurants
  Meal	5813	Bars, Pubs, and Nightclubs
  Meal	5814	Fast Food Restaurants

If your main economic activity is not compatible with meal or food services, the voucher transaction will be declined by the issuer.

For more information, see the site of the Brazilian Ministry of Labor and Employment.

See also