Hello, and welcome to the Edenred Q3 2023 revenue call. Please note, this call is being recorded. For the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand you over to Julien Tanguy, CFO, to begin today's conference. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I'm pleased to welcome you to the Edenred Q3 2023 call. I propose we move to page two, to the executive summary. What do we have to keep in mind for the first nine months of 2023? This quarter is another brilliant quarter, confirming the strong growth momentum of the last few quarters and the increasing contribution from other revenue. It is the sixth consecutive quarter of growth above 20% for Edenred total revenue. In Q3 2023, total revenue stands at EUR 634 million, up 25.3% as reported, and up 23.7% like-for-like.
Q3 2023, Q3 2023 operating revenue standing at EUR 575 million, at 19% as reported, and other revenue of EUR 59 million in Q3, up from EUR 23 million in Q3 2022, as a result of float increase and higher interest rates in most regions. Year to date, total revenue stands at EUR 1.88 billion, up 25.8% as reported, and up 24.9% like-for-like, versus first nine months of 2022. Edenred posted double-digit growth year-to-date across all businesses and all the geographies. We are scaling the Edenred platform with both Scale the Core and Go Beyond. First, Edenred is growing continuously in under-penetrated core markets. As we did over the last years, Edenred is capitalizing the relevance of its offer, even more attractive in the current environment, with strong structural trends.
For instance, working world transformation or new and greener mobility, and in an inflationary context. Benefit & Engagement is supporting the companies aiming to protect the purchasing power of their employees. Mobility and corporate payments are supporting the improvements of organization efficiency. Edenred is leveraging its powerful go-to-market to tackle, in particular, the SME segment, and to actively harness the upselling potential. Concretely, we sign new clients on every segment, including SME, and we push upselling, taking advantage of maximum face value increase. Edenred is, I move to page three. Edenred is also successfully extending its footprint beyond its core offer to target wider addressable markets. Edenred is further promoting Beyond Food, Beyond Fuel, and Beyond Payment offers, thanks to digital and innovative solutions and cross-selling. We are using external growth as an additional lever to address new segments or take new opportunities.
We did the acquisition of Reward Gateway. Reward Gateway is a software-as-a-service engagement platform with operations in the U.K., in Australia, and in the U.S.. GOintegro is a LatAm Reward Gateway with operations in Latin America, and we announced recently the merger of Repom with PagBem in Brazil. I will come back to it in a couple of minutes. Let's close the executive summary with Edenred's full 2023 outlook. Thanks to another quarter of solid growth, Edenred is confident in its ability to generate a full year 2023 EBITDA in the upper half of the previously indicated target range, EUR 1.02 billion and EUR 1.09 billion. And we will deliver a high EBITDA conversion into free cash flow. After the executive summary, I move to the highlights of Q3 2023 on page 5.
We recorded a robust growth, confirming the solid momentum, business momentum, and the increasing contribution from other revenue. On page six, you find the revenue growth of Q3 2023, and the revenue growth for the first 9 months of the year. In Q3, the total revenue is up 23.7% like-for-like, and at the end of September, the growth is 24.9%, that is the same period of last year. Edenred delivered such performance, thanks to strong business momentum, fueled by continued attractiveness of both core and beyond solutions. We got also a higher contribution from other revenue, thanks to robust activity level, generating a higher level of growth and thanks to higher interest rates in Europe. I will come back on the topics later in the presentation. I'm now on page seven, with a breakdown of Edenred performance per business line.
As you can see, it's double digits growth, like-for-like, for every business line, year-to-date, at end of September. At the end of September, Edenred's operating revenue stands at EUR 1.156 billion, up 18.6% like-for-like. It's 22% growth like-for-like in Benefits & Engagement, 40% growth for mobility business line, and 14% for Complementary Solutions. Year-to-date, Benefits & Engagement accounts for 62% of Edenred operating revenue, mobility accounts for 26%, and Complementary Solutions accounts for 12%.... On page eight, let's have a look to the distribution of Edenred operating revenue per geography. Like our business line, we are growing double digits everywhere. 18.7% in Europe, 14.3% in Latin America, and 35% in rest of the world.
So we are delivering outstanding financial performance, and on top of that, we are also recognized for our ESG commitment. I am on page nine. MSCI scoring double A has been reaffirmed. Moody's scoring is now 65 out of 100, i.e., +1 point versus last year, and Edenred has been included in CAC 40 ESG for the second year in a row. You also can see that we are a constituent company of the FTSE4Good Index Series for the 13th year in a row. After the numbers, let's go to page 10, where we come back to our strategy, and let's share concretely how we scale the Edenred platform to further penetrate our markets and Go Beyond. On page eleven, you will recognize the three levels of Edenred Beyond strategy.
First level is Scale the Core, as we want to grow further in under-penetrated markets, like we did over last year, signing new customers and maximizing our client base, reducing the churn, increasing upselling thanks to face value increase, and fostering cross-selling with our large range of solutions. Second level is Extend Beyond. We aim at accelerating Beyond Food, Beyond Fuel, and Beyond Payments, designing and distributing new services on Edenred's unique platform. Our third level is expand in new business opportunities. Let's move to some examples to illustrate those levels. We start with face value as an illustration of Scale the Core. On page 12, we represented the timeline with years 2022 and 2023, and the waves of maximum face value increase we got in many countries. Maximum face value increased took place in many countries, as you can see on this slide.
75% of countries have implemented a new legal face value increase in 2023, after one in 2022. For instance, Poland has decided to increase the face value in February 2022 and to reiterate in September 2023. France has decided 4 face value increases from January 2022 to June 2023. As inflation is still there, government takes care of purchasing power using tools such as meal voucher to protect and increase it. On page 13, we illustrated the way Edenred team exploit those new legal face value. Once a new legal face value has been set by a government, nothing is automatic. We need to get in touch with our clients and propose face value increase for their employees.
According to our historical data, it takes around 24 months to explore the new face value and bring its usage up to the level of usage of the previous maximum face value. To increase the speed of adoption, we are training our sales team, and we give them data-powered tools, allowing them to convince our clients to increase the face value of their employees. After the face value and Scale the Core, we move to Extend Beyond with the acquisition of Reward Gateway. I am on page 14. I remind you, we did the acquisition in May this year. Reward Gateway is the leading software and service platform, proposing 8 engagement modules, of which employee savings, social animation, reward and recognition, or wellness and well-being. Those modules allow employers to attract and retain employees in a labor market where scarcity of talented people is still high.
Reward Gateway is growing nicely in the three countries where we have operations. Reward Gateway is market leader in the U.K. and Australia and is managing operations in the U.S.. The Reward Gateway operating revenue growth is above 25% in Q3 versus last year. We are working on the deployment of this platform in six countries in continental Europe: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Romania, and Spain, and we will launch pilots in the coming months. We move now to other illustration of our strategy with our platform in France on page 15. Edenred's platform offers a portfolio of diversified Benefits & Engagement solutions, and among those products sits the Ticket Restaurant. Ticket Restaurant is the leading digital authority at the forefront of innovation. The French meal voucher market is still vastly under-penetrated at 25% penetration.
Edenred is number one on the market and number one in digital with 2 million users. 75% of our business volume is digital, which is far above the market average at 60%. We are at the forefront of digital disruption. Edenred pioneered all key innovative features over the last 10 years. First mover for mobile payment, first mobile, first mover to connect to meal delivery platform, first mover to plastic- less, first mover to complementary payments. In 2023, Ticket Restaurant accounts for less than 60% of France revenue for Edenred. What is meal voucher in France today? Meal voucher is more than ever entrenched in French social landscape. Meal voucher is the favorite social benefit among French employees. It is a well-recognized tool to support healthy eating, and meal voucher has undisputed economic impact on restaurants and local job creation.
Plan for full digitalization of meal voucher by 2025 or 2026 has been recently announced by the government, and Edenred is fully ready for the switch to digital. Edenred is well-placed to take full advantage of digitalization and acceleration, and accelerate penetration, especially company markets. 75% of our volume being already digitalized, we still have 25% of our volume to migrate, and we will help any company to migrate to digital. Ticket Restaurant is one among many products we have in France. I move to page 16, where you find a large portfolio of French Beyond Food solutions, of which Kadéos, our gift card brand, or Ticket Mobilité for green mobility. The portfolio of solutions accounts for 30% of our revenue in France. All those products are available on our benefit platform. For instance, ProwebCE offers employee savings solution.
Thanks to your account, you can have access to promotions and discounts, especially negotiated with merchants for you by Edenred. All in all, around 10 million people are using our benefit solution in France. Combining all those products, an employer can bring up to EUR 6,000 euro additional purchasing power per employee, per year. As we have many clients in France, we plan to propose Reward Gateway platform to those clients in the coming years. We will propose additional modules coming from Reward Gateway that will enrich our offer, such as reward and recognition, well-being, or social animation. Thanks to Reward Gateway, we are enlarging the addressable market of Edenred in France by 25%, as we will address 25% of French benefit market, versus 20% with our current offer. After France, we move to another large country in Europe as we go to Germany on page 17.
Germany is the best underpenetrated benefits and engagement market. Today, our main solution in Germany is the Edenred City Card. It is a simple and flexible benefit-in-kind solution, including reload and monthly subscription. You can load up to 50 EUR per month, and it represents up to 600 EUR additional purchasing power per year and per employee. As of today, we have 1.5 million people enjoying this solution, accepted by more than 7,000 local merchants. In the context of purchasing power concerns, the operating revenue coming from Edenred City Card has increased by more than 40% in 2023 versus 2022 so far.
Germany is a major European economy, and this market is offering a great potential we will tackle with Reward Gateway offer, and Germany is one of the six countries where we plan to deploy this platform in continental Europe. Today, with Edenred City, we access 10% of the German benefit market. With Reward Gateway, we will address another 15% of the German benefit market. Benefit highlight is done. Let's turn to page 18 and zoom on mobility and beyond two strategy. We recently announced the merger of Repom, an Edenred company, with PagBem in Brazil. What is the freight payment market in Brazil? It is a large and underpenetrated market with significant growth opportunities. Freight payment is a EUR 60 billion market with more than 1 million independent truckers.
Freight payment market for their services, outsourced and expenses paid by large carriers and shippers to independent truck drivers for deliveries. What is our position on the market? Well, Repom is the leader of the freight market payments in Brazil, and PagBem is number three on the market. With this merger, we are combining Edenred and PagBem operations. PagBem cloud-based platform provides high efficiency, security, and control to carriers, shippers, and independent truckers. Edenred will own 70% of merge activity. There is no cash investment, and the mechanism to reach 100% stake is planned. We expect significant synergies, thanks to great complementarity between both platforms. Freight business is a scale business. Our ambition is to strengthen Edenred Repom's market-leading offer to further leverage scale on the market. After the highlights, we move now to more detailed view on our financial performance. I am on page 20.
In Q3, our operating revenue is up 19% in published figures, and is up 16.2% like-for-like, with positive impact in scope. As you know, we did the acquisition of Reward Gateway and other acquisition, and with a negative impact in currencies, mainly coming from Argentina and Turkey. At the end of September, year to date, our operating revenue is up 20.5% in reported figures. On page 21, let's go deeper with Edenred's performance in Europe. Operating revenue in Europe stands at above EUR 1 billion for the first nine months of the year. At the end of September, Edenred's operating revenue in Europe is at 22.2% in reported figures versus 2022. In France, we are confirming a double-digit growth.
I've already shared with you in the highlights part of this presentation, we take advantage of the increased attractiveness of benefits and engagements solutions translating into strong growth of our leading digital Ticket Restaurant offer and Beyond Food solutions, driven by the success of employee savings platform. We also have a positive momentum for mobility in France. Another comment about France performance, the four-year contract we have with Action Logement is over. Action Logement is a French institution managing housing for workers. The platform of Action Logement has been successfully used to deliver subsidy to end user to renovate their home. More than EUR 2 billion of subsidies have been distributed.
In the rest of Europe, Edenred posted solid growth in benefits and engagement, despite higher comparison basis, driven by sustained co-commercial dynamism in Ticket Restaurant, and growing contribution of maximum face value usage, as already explained. This growth is also driven by continued success of Beyond Food solutions. We also delivered rapid growth in mobility, thanks to the success of Beyond Fuel strategy, and good dynamics in fuel solutions, despite the negative fuel price impact. After Europe, we go to Latin America, where we have strong commercial momentum across the region, and I move to page 22. In Brazil, Edenred growth is double digits in benefits and engagement, driven by Itaú Unibanco partnership, helping to further penetrate the SME segment in meal and food. And the growth is also driven by the increased contribution of the Beyond Food offer.
We also benefited from continued success of the Fuel Beyond solutions with store and maintenance, partly offset by the decline in fuel prices at the top. In Hispanic Latin America, growth is coming from solid pace in mobility, notably thanks to the successful roll out of the Fuel Beyond solutions. And the growth is also coming from the rapid growth in benefits and engagement. After the operating revenue, let's move to other revenue on page 23. Other revenue more than doubled in Q3 2023 versus Q3 2022. Business momentum is impacting the flow positively. As our business volume is growing, our float is growing accordingly. And also note the positive impact on floats from the new regulation in Brazil, where clients' payment terms have been banned. Interest rate increases also contributes to other revenue increase.
It is to Europe, in particular in the Euro zone, with a repeated interest rate hike since Q3 2022, and it is true also in Latin America, in a context of continued rate rises, notably in Hispanic Latin America, notably in Mexico, and despite a 50 basis point decrease in Selic rate in Q3 2023 in Brazil. Year to date, the other revenue amounts to EUR 141 million, to be compared with EUR 53 million in 2022. On page 24, you will find the total revenue picture. At the end of September, total revenue is the sum of operating revenue and other revenue. Year to date, the total revenue stands at EUR 1.8 billion, up 25.8% as reported, and plus 24.9% like-for-like. We have good impact in scope, especially coming from Reward Gateway.
As a conclusion, I propose to move to page 26, and to the 2023 outlook. So Edenred is on its way to achieve new records in 2023, with full year EBITDA estimated above EUR 1 billion, deploying the Beyond 22-25 strategy. First, operating on vastly under-penetrated markets, Edenred maintains a strong commercial momentum. Second, in a context of strengthening attractiveness of its solutions, Edenred continues to enrich its offer Beyond Food, Beyond Fuel, and Beyond Payments, undertaking M&A as an additional booster. Third, Edenred is continuously investing in product and technology innovations to seize opportunities arising from new secular trends, and thereby fuel future growth. Generating sustainable and profitable growth, Edenred is confident in its ability to generate full year 2023 EBITDA in the upper half previously indicated target range of between EUR 1.02 billion and EUR 1.09 billion. The presentation is over.
I'm now ready to answer your questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question on today's call, please press star one to signal for your question. That is star one. Our first question today comes from Julien Richer from Kepler. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Three questions for me, please. The first one, is it fair, or let's put it differently: how do you see other revenue evolving going forward? Or, is it fair to annualize the Q3 2023 other revenue of EUR 15 million? Second question, can you please give us any early comment on the gift voucher season and the potential impact on Q4? And the last one, if you can please quantify the fuel impact in Q3. Thank you.
Thank you, Julien. So let's start with other revenue. You've seen that the other revenue are high in Q3. What is clear is that because our business volume is growing, the money we can invest is growing, too, so it has a positive impact. So this is the positive side of the other revenue. Then regarding, I would say, the more negative side, there is the trend in interest rates. So as I said, interest rates are still high in Europe, and I think they will stay high, at least in the Euro zone, which is not the case in other European country. And for instance, in Poland, the rates have started to decrease.
So let's consider that it could happen in other countries in Eastern Europe. And it is the same in Brazil. So in Brazil, we have two impacts. The first one is very positive. It is a new regulation in Brazil, and payment terms have been banned. It means that we are decreasing our DSO, so we are increasing the floats. But on the other hand, we know that Central Bank in Brazil has decided to start to decrease interest rates. So they decided to decrease by 50 basis points in Q3, and they plan to keep on decreasing interest rates in the coming months. So, all in all, I think that there will be a kind of compensation in this country.
So, Q3 is, I would say, a good performance in terms of total revenue. We'll see how it goes, taking into account all those impacts. Your second question is about the gift campaign for Christmas 2023. It's too early to say it. We are the nineteenth of October, it's just the beginning of the campaign, of 2023 Christmas season. We did very well last year in many countries, in Europe and in Latin America. I cannot give you a trend, as it's only the very beginning of the peak season.
Regarding fuel price impacts in Q3, so, you know that around 11% of the revenue is sensitive to fuel price. And what's important to us is fuel price at pump, it's not the fuel price on the market. When we look at the impact of fuel price in Q3, it's around 1% in terms of growth. So it is a negative impact, because last year, fuel price was still high in Q3. And when we look at where it was, especially in July and August, this year, it was far below what it was last year. So, let's consider that the negative impact on our revenue, on our operating revenue is 1%.
Okay. Just a quick follow-up on the gift voucher season. Could you please remind us what has been the impact last year in Q4, in terms of operating revenue?
So we don't give this kind of a breakdown of our operating revenue. The impact of gift season you can see it on Q4 last year, for sure. It also have an impact on Q1 and Q2 this year, as we book the revenue coming from merchants, when we reimburse the vouchers. And most of the vouchers that we issue during the last quarter of the year is reimbursed during the first quarter of the next year. So however, we have a great offer on those markets. We brought evolutions to the offer we have in France, especially, so we are confident in our capacity to succeed in this peak season.
Thank you very much.
Hello?
Thank you. We'll now move on to our next question from André Juillard at Deutsche Bank. Your line is open, please go ahead.
Good morning, and congratulations for this strong revenue publication. First question from me was about Complementary Solutions. We see a slowdown in Q3. Could you give us some more color about the trend on that business line? Second question about your annual guidance. So you find yourself in the high range of the initial one, but regarding the financial revenues evolution, do we have to deduct that you are a little bit more cautious of the profitability versus the operating revenues or not? Or is it just because you continue to invest in CapEx? So more granularity also on that side. And last question about French regulation.
The antitrust gave a recommendation not to cap commission rate, but what is the next step? Did you have already some contacts with the French government, and you have a clear idea of their intentions? Sorry. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, André. So we start with Complementary Solutions. So in Complementary Solutions, we have different businesses. As I said, we had a contract in France with Action Logement, with a platform distributing subsidies for people to retrofit their house. So this contract has been ended in June this year. So it was a big contract that started in 2019. And it is a public social program, just for you to know where we classify these contracts. And it has been a success, so this contract is over. Now, in Complementary Solutions, we also have a corporate payment in the U.S. with CSI.
So, regarding CSI, we are still growing, knowing that we've been able to launch new verticals, and we have good success with those new verticals. And we are doing well also with some verticals we used to manage. For instance, Golf Club, which is a good market for us in the U.S. What is happening at CSI is that we are suffering from the media industry, because the level of activity in media is quite low compared to what it used to be. So, you know that media is one of our major vertical at CSI. So what we can say is that we've been able to grow at CSI at mid-teen level.
So this is what is impacting the Complementary Solutions in Q3. And just to come back to Action Logement, this contract was a four-year contract, so it has been indeed ended as it was planned. Now, moving to the annual guidance. So we said that we will be in the upper half of the target we gave you in July. So yes, we have a positive impact coming from other revenue. Then regarding the growth we plan in Q4, we plan to keep on growing strongly in Q4.
And we will be able to generate good level of true profitability. We are not particularly cautious with that in Q4. When you do the math, you know that this quarter is important for us, it represents something like 30% of our revenue of the year. As I said, we have a comparison basis that is high due to the good performance we did last year - last year. So we are confident in our capacity to renew good performance. But the comparison basis being bigger, it means that year after year, we know we need to keep the client we gain the previous year, and to find new clients to generate the growth.
You know, this market is quite different from Ticket Restaurant, as everywhere, every year, we start from zero, and we need to reconvince our clients to sign contracts with us. Then moving to French regulation. So maybe we can spend a couple of minutes on that topic. That is very important for us. So, as you know, the report from the Antitrust Authority has been published on Tuesday this week. So this report had been requested by the French ministry in charge of small companies. And I would say this report is very positive. First thing that is key is that both the minister and the Antitrust Authority reaffirmed the importance of meal voucher scheme in France.
Second, it is the first recommendation coming from the Antitrust Authority, and as you said, they do not recommend to cap the merchant fees, and it is their first recommendation in the report. Third thing that is very important and very positive for us, we will have mandatory digitization of the market in the coming months, so it could be 2025 or 2026. You know, we are the leader on the digital market of Ticket Restaurant, so we are pushing to have the digitization coming as soon as possible. So we are positive with the idea of moving to a digital at the beginning of 2025.
So we are going to talk with the government in the coming weeks, to see how we can materialize all the things that have been reported by the Antitrust Authority in the Ticket Restaurant scheme in France. But really, when we look at the recommendations, we see that we need to work on the new scheme, but we are in line with the recommendations that have been published by the Antitrust Authority.
Very clear. Thank you. Just a follow-up on the digitalization. If we look at what happened in Belgium, correct me if I'm wrong, but the move to digital was done in almost 18 months. Couldn't you recommend to accelerate this move, and not even talk about 2026, but in the next 6 months or 12 months?
Yes, absolutely. I totally agree with you, and we would be very happy with full digitization at the beginning of 2025. It means that we would have 12-15 months in front of us to migrate all the companies that are paper today.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Our next question now comes from Simon LeChipre from Stifel. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Three on my side, please. First of all, as a follow-up on the regulation, I mean, among the different recommendation made, there is one which aims to basically reduce your bargaining power relative to merchants. I mean, this is a recommendation number 3. I mean, could you give us your thoughts on the implication of this recommendation, how could it be implemented, and the likelihood that it materialize? Secondly, on fleet and mobility, it seems like the like-for-like growth, excluding fuel price, was like 16%, which is still a slowdown compared to Q2. So could you perhaps give us some details here?
And lastly, just on financial expenses, looking at consensus, analysts expect net financial expenses next year, slightly above EUR 130 million, so roughly in line with 2023. I mean, I would rather expect to step up again next year, so could you give us your view on what would be the right level for next year, please? Thank you.
... Okay, Simon, thank you for your questions. Let's start with regulation and what you call give more bargaining power to merchants. Well, to be frank, it's not easy to see how this kind of recommendation could be implemented. There is a parallel in the report that is done between the credit card and the meal voucher programs. And to be clear, the two programs are totally different, and I think it is key to well understand what we are doing with our product.
On one side, you have universal money, i.e., when you have a credit card and you go for a transaction with the merchants, you don't have any rules to manage, except the rules that your bank has decided in terms of amount you can spend with your card. And sometimes the rule is in the chip of your card, okay? So you can process the transaction quite easily, and nothing has to be controlled. When you look at what we are doing, and it's very important to understand, you know that we are managing specific purpose money. What does it mean to manage specific purpose money?
It means that first thing, as we are in a prepaid business and as we need to manage many rules with the, with the payments, we have what we call systematic authorization card. It means that nothing can happen with our card if you don't go to the authorization platform we are managing, to check the rules of our products. And when we say the rules, we have many rules to manage. So in France, for instance, each time you have a transaction, you need to check the balance of the account, because we are in prepaid, so if you don't have money on your card, we will not allow the transaction. Then you need to check the network. Is the merchant where from where the transaction is coming from, part of our network or not?
Third thing, we need to check the amount of the transaction, because you know that in France, you have a cap, you cannot spend more than 25 EUR with your card every day. Last thing, we need to check the day of the transaction, as you cannot use your card on Sunday. You need to check all those things, and then you need to accept or decline the transaction. This is the main value that we bring to the market, and this is what is key for us, because it's the way we allow our money to be spent in a limited number of merchants. If we consider the value chain of our proposition, the value is coming from the capacity to filter our transaction. Then, of course, you need to pay the merchants.
So for us, if you say, we need to see how we can separate on one hand, the controls, and on the other hand, the settlements, there is something that doesn't work, okay? So, I don't know how the antitrust authority plan to deploy such features, but in my view, it's very complex, and to be honest, I don't see how this can be implemented. Now we'll see, but for me, it's clear that it's not something that will be easy to implement. And, if we do something new in terms of clearing house, for instance, it means that we'll have to invest massively, because it's not easy to do.
So if we are talking of investment, it means that someone will have to pay, and at the end of the day, I'm not sure someone will pay for that, as it is very complex. So the value chain that we have is built to manage specific purpose money, and at the end of the day, it is done because we want to generate traffic to the merchants that are part of our work. And the value proposition we have is clear. We come with huge volumes. You've seen that the volume on the market in France is above EUR 8 billion, and those volume are managed to be spent within our network, i.e., with the restaurants that are part of our network. So this is my view on that.
So we'll see with the discussion we have with the government, what they have in mind, knowing that this recommendation is coming from, from the antitrust authority. I don't know if those people know exactly how our products are managed and how our platforms are working. But it's very important to understand that we are managing a specific purpose money. We are not managing universal money. It is the heart of our activity, and it is exactly what we can manage on the market. So in terms of likelihood of implementation, I think it's quite low.
Then you have a question regarding fleet and mobility activity and the growth where we have seen in fleet and mobility. So, we are growing nicely in fleet and mobility. Compared to the rest of the year, you see that the impact of fuel price is still there, so we say that it is 1% of growth at the level of the group. But obviously, when you consider the fleet and mobility business, it's even higher, and it's more than 3% of growth that or of negative growth that is coming from the fuel price impact at front.
When you look at our different markets and our different businesses, we are growing very well with our Beyond Fuel strategy, especially in Brazil, with the maintenance and with the toll. It's also true in Europe, where we are doing very well with toll and also with VAT recovery. So, we are still growing nicely above 15%. I think that we will be able to keep on going with this activity in the coming months. Last question is about financial expenses. You know that when you look at our P&L, you have the impact of interest rate increase in the other revenue. You also have the impact of interest rate increase in financial expenses.
What you need to consider for next year is mainly the acquisition of Reward Gateway. We did this acquisition in May this year, and we issued bonds in June. These are fixed rate bond. You know that we issued EUR 1.2 billion at 3.62%. So you need to consider the full year impact of the acquisition of Reward Gateway in financial expenses next year, which is something key. And the other thing you need to consider is the fact that part of our debt is in a floating rates, meaning that you will also have the impact of the increase of interest rates, you know, for the euro.
These are the things you need to consider and to compute, to see where we will land next year in terms of financial expenses.
Could, like, EUR 150 million be a right level for next year at this stage, based on what you see on current interest rate?
It's difficult to say. We need to recompute, we are starting the budget process, but, in a way, it could be something like that. But, yeah, it will be higher than this year.
Okay, thank you.
Due to the full year impact of the Reward Gateway acquisition.
Thank you very much.
Our next question now comes from Harry Martin, from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Hi, yeah, good morning. I've got a few questions on regulation and then one on the guidance. From reading the report, one of the major arguments the Antitrust Commission made is that incumbents are increasing commissions on merchants to fund very low, even negative employer contribution commissions. And we've also seen similar moves limiting negative commissions in Brazil and Italy. So I wondered if you could outline, firstly, do you recognize the findings and the data that the commission presented in the report? And share any perspective on how your conversation with restaurants are going about the value you provide to them, which might be very different to what's being portrayed in some of the media recently.
A second question, which is related to that, is we've seen some new entrants out in those countries proposing much lower or even zero commissions to restaurants, and shifting more of the burden onto employers and things like monthly fees. You know, what are your thoughts on the economic viability of that business model? And then a final one, just on the shift to digital. You know, one of the suggestions in the report is that actually public sector contracts are the major part of the market that are still either hybrid or fully paper in terms of the vouchers.
If we go to 100% digital voucher market in France, is there any market share risk in terms of public sector, or do you expect to be able to, you know, retain a strong market share, even when there's a little bit more competition from digital-only players? Thank you very much.
Okay. So, let's start with the first question you asked about what is written in the report regarding both sides of the market. So first, when we move to digital, the level of fees that is charged to restaurant is lower. And the second thing is that when you move to digital, you make huge savings because you don't have to manage paper every week. When you are working with paper, you need to count the vouchers, put the voucher in a parcel, send the parcel to the issuers to get your reimbursement. So it takes time. So when you look at the total cost of ownership of digital versus paper, the total cost of ownership of digital is much lower compared to what it was with paper.
Now, regarding what is written in the report, regarding the level of commissions of, on both sides. It is written on the report that some issuers have negative commission for their clients, and it is an average. I can tell you that this is not the case at Kadéos, okay? We are charging our clients, and we are charging, our, our merchants. And, due to the quality of our offer, we are able to say to our clients that they have to pay for that. This is, this is something that is very important. Now, what is happening on the market, I don't know. I don't know what my competitors are doing. I can imagine that some newcomers on the market who got big contracts few years ago, giving rebates to their clients, have negative, negative commission.
We know their numbers, we know their P&L, so we know that's why, for instance, they have negative commissions, for sure. Regarding the merchant side, you see that the level of fees we charge to the merchants is quite stable from 2018 to 2022. What is key for us is to work on the mix of our merchants and is to bring new services to the merchants. So if our pickup rate have been increasing, it's because we came with new services. I already talked a lot about what we are doing with meal delivery platform, but for us, the way to monetize our flow is to add services to the market and to the restaurants.
So for me, we are not part of the incumbent who have increased merchant fees a lot over the last years, and it is written in the report of the antitrust authority. Last comment on client commission, we have the impact of the client mix. You know that we are working a lot to have more SME as part of our client portfolio, and we are charging SME with higher fees than large accounts, and it has an impact on our ticket rate. So this is the first question you asked about the incumbent pricing strategy on the market.
The second question you have is around new entrants and new business model with some new entrants that are deciding not to charge the merchants, and to ask employers to pay for the service. There are some new entrants that are doing that. Today, they are very small on the market. I'm not sure we can say they are successful. I think you have their market share in the report. 0.22% of the market, so it's very low. When we look at the only new entrant that has been able to grab some volumes, it is the Swile.
When you look at the level of their merchant fee, it's quite high and quite comparable to our level because they are managing four corners. So you have to take into account the 3.5% they charge, and on top of that, you need to add 0.28% coming from the interchange, because they are in a four-corner model. So I don't know how the new entrants will be able to manage their PNL with commission coming from clients only. Then, regarding the shift to digital of the public sector, it's a very good comment. When we look at the market today, the majority of the volume that still has to be migrated to digital is in the public sector.
At the end of the day, it's a good news for Edenred. Why? Because the two leaders in the public sector in France are out and do not exist, so now Swile. So we know that they will have to migrate their clients. Because it is public sector, all the public administration that will have to migrate to digital will have to launch new tenders. And they will launch tenders, and for sure, we will answer to those tenders with the ambition to win those tenders. Knowing that, as I said, we have a great offer in terms of Ticket Restaurant and in terms of platform.
We will compete with the leaders of the public sector in France to grab market share and to increase our global market share on the market, knowing that we are number one by far on the French market, in both full volume and digital volume.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. In the interest of time, we kindly ask you to limit yourselves to one question from now on. Our next question comes from Pratik Gondhale of Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hello, good morning. This is Pratik Gondhale from Barclays. Thanks for taking my questions. So just one questions quickly, on French regulations. Obviously, it took everyone by surprise a couple of weeks back, but can you share with us, are there any other investigations maybe underway in other countries, by competition authorities there, and any risk we should be aware of around those, outside France?
Okay. So, we have these reports in France. You know that our markets are very local markets. It means that each market is different from the other. The business model is not the same, and the product is not the same. You have some countries where our Ticket Restaurant can be used in large networks, you have, like it is the case in Belgium. You have some countries where Ticket Restaurant can be used only in a very limited network, the case in Spain, where you can use your Ticket Restaurant only with restaurants. So all our markets are very local. And when we're talking of regulation, we are talking a lot of what is happening in France today.
But we are very, we have many countries where we have a positive impact of regulation. You know, I spent two slides on face value increase. Face value increase that are decided by your government is a positive impact coming from regulation. Another example of what is positive in terms of regulation, I talked of the end of payment terms in Brazil. It has an impact on our flows. You'll see that it will have an impact on our free cash flow at the end of the year. It has also impact on our other revenue, as I already mentioned. So when we look at regulation, we need to consider all the side of the regulation.
So, on one hand, you can have some discussions like we have in France, and the other hand, you can have also a positive impact. And indeed, we are slightly regulated. It's not a full regulation like banks can have. So, and as I said, all our markets are very separated, and regulation can change, but also on a positive way, as we've seen over the last two years, and I think that we need to keep that in mind, that regulation can be positive.
Thank you very much. That's helpful.
Thank you. Now we're moving on to a question from Sabrina Blanc of Société Générale. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I have just one question as we have to limit. I just would like to understand the performance in Brazil, and it looks like a weakness for Edenred compared to the previous quarter. And if I can add something also in Europe, it looks like that we have sort of normalization thanks to the comparable in terms of a face value increase, but just to understand what could be the trend in the coming quarters.
Okay. So, let's start with Europe. In Europe, we are growing above 15% in Q3. So it's a high level of growth indeed. And if we look at the trends, and I come back to what I said previously regarding the gift voucher campaign we did last year, so we've been very successful in Q4. And you know that as we book the revenue coming from merchants when the vouchers are reimbursed, we have a positive impact of the gift campaign we did last year in Q4, in Q1 and Q2 this year. So we do more than 15% growth in Q3 this year. Keep in mind that last year in Q3, we did +20%, something like that, in Europe.
So the comparison basis is higher, and we have the impact coming from gift voucher. But 15% growth in the rest of Europe is a very decent growth, and in terms of capacity to keep on going above 10% or double digits, we will keep on going at that pace in the coming months. And I don't know if we can talk of kind of normalization. We are growing, and you know that we are entering now the new gift campaign, so we'll see how it goes. Then regarding Brazil, so I don't know if your question was about employee benefits or more global.
When we look at the performance we've been able to achieve in Q3, in employee benefits, well, as I said, it is a double-digit growth, and indeed, it's a very good performance. We are doing very well with our full range of solutions, and with meal voucher. We see that, indeed, the growth in Brazil employee benefits is accelerating quarter after quarter. So, it's a very positive trend, we have today in Brazil.
Thank you. Our last question today comes from Ed Young, from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good morning. You've spoken a lot about French regulation today, and I don't want you to have to repeat a long answer in detail. But you've given some very sort of strong arguments that technically you think some of the proposals by the antitrust regulator wouldn't work or wouldn't be feasible. But I guess the big-picture question is, the authority clearly believes that the market isn't working properly and that the market is too concentrated, and that there need to be structural changes to reduce the power of the largest players and help competition. So I guess, do you think it's really plausible that the government would introduce measures like digitization, that are gonna be positive to you, but in the end, not actually introduce any measures that will be negative to you? Do you think...
You know, your technical challenges notwithstanding, do you think that's a realistic outcome on a multi-year view? And then secondly, I'll appreciate, not a second question, but let's call it a technical follow-up. Can you just give us the increase in the float from the regulatory changes in Brazil, just so we can understand the rate versus float size dynamics to help calculate other revenue going forward? Thanks.
Okay. So, again, the French regulation and the question you ask about the fact that the market is concentrated. Well, indeed, what's happened over the last year is that many newcomers came on the market, and one of them is Swile, and they invested a lot. You know that this is what we could call a SoftBank company, so they raised a huge amount of money to take position on the market, and they decided to merge with another player that is a Natixis subsidiary in charge of benefits. Indeed, what we see is that we are on a market where if you want to come with the right offer to your users, you need to invest a lot.
And what we are doing is not something that is easy to do. I explained how we manage transactions. There are not so many companies that are able to manage this kind of technology today, and if you want to be able to do it, you need to invest. And then we are a scale business, and we started in France 50 years ago. We have been able to grow and to find clients, and because we are in a B2B industry, you need to go after your clients one by one. This is something that is very specific. So now when it is written that the market is consolidated, it's true.
Now, when you look at the number of players that we have on the market, today in France, you have 13 different meal voucher issuers, 13. Of which, some are quite big. And when I look at other markets in France, but also in other countries, when you have 13 competitors, you cannot say there is no competition. Okay, so there is a lot of competition. The market is not that easy to penetrate, as you need to invest both in technology and in sales force. And regarding sales force, because it's a B2B market, you need to go after your clients one by one, and it takes a lot of time.
So I don't know what can be done by the authority to change that, and to decide that you will have maybe two or three other companies on the market. What is clear is that we have a great offer, and we are able to push this offer to our clients. For sure, our digital offer is difficult to match for newcomers and even for our competitors. Then regarding the increase of float in Brazil. I give you some numbers, but you probably know them. When you look at the float in the company, around 15% of the float is coming from Brazil, from Latin America, most of it coming from Brazil.
Yes, the level of float of Brazil will increase. It will come from the reduction of the DSO. Now it's not something I use to communicate, and I don't give this kind of numbers, but I think you can work on the DSO in Brazil and see what could be the impact if you reduce the DSO and knowing that you have the numbers in terms of float that is coming from there. So... But it is a significant. It's not a small amount of cash.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. I would now like to hand the call back over to Mr. Tanguy for any additional or closing remarks.
Okay. So, in a nutshell, we did another strong quarter in Q3. As I said, during the presentation, six consecutive quarters with a growth of our total revenue above 20%. We are confident in our capacity to generate an EBITDA in the upper half of the target we gave in July. And as you know, if we look in front of us, we are still committed to our midterm targets of 12% like-for-like EBITDA growth for 2024. And you know that this is not a CAGR, and that this growth will come on top of the performance we will deliver this year. Thank you very much. Have a nice day. Bye-bye.
Thank you for joining today's call. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect.