Payslips: welfare becomes the best ally against the high cost of living

The combination of inflation, pay levels and the tax wedge – which are eroding people’s purchasing power – means that welfare benefits have become one of the greatest assets for Italian workers within their remuneration packages. 78 per cent consider it important or essential for a company to offer welfare benefits, and 77 per cent see them as a safeguard against the high cost of living in their day-to-day expenses.

Gone are the days when welfare credit lay unused and was either lost after expiring or transferred to a supplementary pension scheme. Technological advances in digital platforms now mean that these funds can be used for countless types of expenditure – from education and training to gym membership and various goods and services via vouchers – and that spending them is much easier. In this regard, however, there is still much to be done to improve the offering: over a third of those who have access to welfare schemes still make little use of them, to the extent that 37 per cent would like a wider network of participating merchants, more widely spread across the country, so that they can use them more. Ease of use and a widespread acceptance network are the two key factors determining the real effectiveness of the benefit for workers and businesses on a large scale.

The “Italians and Corporate Welfare” Observatory, produced by SWG for Satispay, paints a picture of a country where corporate welfare has evolved progressively and is now widely recognised and utilised as an indispensable means of financial support. Alberto Dalmasso, CEO and co-founder of Satispay, explains that “a few years ago, we could clearly see how corporate welfare was becoming a major trend and a cornerstone for managing the cost of living and planning for the future. From the very beginning, our commitment has been to provide employees with an immediate and intuitive user experience – the same one our more than 6.5 million users are already familiar with – and a truly extensive acceptance network. In less than three years, we have grown to serve over 430,000 employees across more than 45,000 companies’. By July 2026, the annualised volume of corporate welfare benefits disbursed via Satispay had exceeded €480 million, up 197 per cent year-on-year. In terms of usage, 78 per cent of spending on Satispay fringe benefits (shopping vouchers) is concentrated in the 25–54 age group. Spending on fringe benefits takes place both at physical retailers (40.6 per cent) and via digital gift cards (59.4 per cent). In the former case, the breakdown reflects households’ everyday needs: large retailers and supermarkets account for the largest share (16.3 per cent), followed by catering (12.5 per cent) and retail (8 per cent). In the latter case, gift cards cover a wide range of everyday and household needs: from food shopping to fuel, from clothing to electronics, from travel to personal care. However, when it comes to using vouchers, the ease of use and widespread availability of the network are crucial. Looking at the credit allocated between June 2025 and June 2026, Satispay found that the welfare credits allocated are used up quickly: the average time taken to use up meal vouchers was around 32 days, for fringe benefits it was 42 days, and for FlexBen it was around 51 days.

Returning to the SWG survey, whilst 78 per cent of Italian workers today consider welfare to be essential for covering daily expenses, looking at the bigger picture, the situation is not set to change: 73 per cent, in fact, regard it as a means of easing the burden of day-to-day costs and creating opportunities to save. When it comes to their pay packets – eroded not only by the tax wedge but also by utility bills, high petrol prices and the cost of living in general – three out of four Italians are now aware that they would achieve greater savings with €200 in welfare benefits than with the same amount paid as taxable income in their pay packet. And one in two employees would also prefer to receive their performance bonus in the form of welfare credits, recognising that these offer greater spending power than a gross pay rise. The picture that has emerged reflects a context in which corporate welfare is now well-established, albeit largely confined in its conception to the use of tax incentives and thus to the logic of cost-effectiveness. Half of the employees interviewed have corporate benefits, a proportion that increases as the size of the company grows. The three most common benefits are meal vouchers (52 per cent), supplementary healthcare (48 per cent) and fringe benefits (42 per cent). Although there is a clear appreciation of corporate welfare among employees, its uptake is still not particularly widespread.