French startup Leeto provides a service for French works councils, better known as comités d’entreprise. The fintech startup lets you hand out perks to employees using a simple web service combined with a payment card.
Leeto recently raised a $2.2 million funding round (€2 million) from Founders Future and various business angels, such as Thomas Rebaud (Meero), Benjamin Netter (October) and Vincent Luciani (Artefact).
If you’re not familiar with French works councils, every French company with more than 50 employees has to elect representatives to defend the interests of employees — starting in 2020, companies with more than 11 employees will have a works council. They act as the interface between members of the board and employees, and they vote on strategic moves.
In addition to that role, companies have to hand out a small budget to the works council every year. Works councils can then reimburse cultural or sports activities, hand out gift cards for Christmas, give movie tickets, etc.
And Leeto wants to manage that budget in particular. Many companies currently have a cumbersome process. You have to send receipts of your yoga lessons, find a store that accepts your gift cards… It’s even worse for representatives as they have to order paper gift cards and make sure everyone picks up their gift cards at their desk.
Leeto is a software-as-a-service the lets you manage all that from a web browser. You can add employees and then grant them perks.
Later this year, every employee will get a prepaid Mastercard that the works council can top up and manage. For instance, representatives can hand out €500 a year for vacation and cultural activities. Employees can then use this card to pay for a Netflix subscription, train tickets, museum tickets and more. It works a bit like Lunchr, but for works councils.
If employees go on vacation and forget their card, they can also upload eligible expenses to get reimbursed even if they paid with a personal card.
On the works council’s side, Leeto wants to make it easier to manage accounting and send notifications to employees. Leeto currently costs €3 per employee per month, but that’s directly taken from the budget of the works council so employees don’t pay that.
