Kangkan Halder: Please introduce yourself and tell us how Edonys was founded.
Jonathan Marroyen: Since March 2023, Edonys has been the new brand of our 100% made-in-Luxembourg company, Vireo Sàrl. We created Vireo in 2018 with two other partners: me, Bernard Felten and Jean-Noel Didrich--with one ambition--to revolutionise personal taxation. A fourth partner, Olivier Rozet, joined us in 2020 and our first product was Mytax, a digital tax assistant that allows any citizen to answer simple questions to generate their Luxembourg tax return 100% optimised and ready to send.
Can you tell us about what inspired Joybizz and its main objective?
The experience and relationships we’ve built up with Mytax have enabled us to hear about other needs in the Luxembourg market and beyond. One of these comes from employers. They are constantly looking for new solutions to optimise their payroll costs, while at the same time making their business more attractive to employees and candidates.
We started thinking about Joybiiz at the beginning of 2023, thanks to a young entrepreneur, Anthony Saraga. His project was to innovate in terms of the discounts offered by businesses to their employees. One thing led to another, and we developed this idea and brought him our expertise in digitalisation, bringing the cashback principle to the table. Thanks to this technology, Joybiiz’s main objective is to harness the power of cashback and automation, and make them available to employers, employees and retailers. Today, Anthony has joined us to market Joybiiz under the Edonys flag.
Merchants no longer need to pay transaction fees or give change when they receive meal vouchers.
Can you explain the benefits of partnering with Luxhub?
Cashback technology requires secure reading of our users’ transaction data. To achieve this, a very important legal framework needs to be integrated under the supervision of Luxhub and the watchful eye of the Luxembourg Financial Sector Supervisory Commission, the CSSF. Instead of reinventing the wheel, we looked for a player that was also 100% made-in-Luxembourg. And Luxhub proved to be the ideal candidate. Its credibility is unquestionable, as it works with big names and was founded by four banks: Spuerkeess, BGL BNP Paribas, Raiffeisen and Post Luxembourg. Thanks to our partnership with Luxhub, we benefit from their invaluable expertise and know-how, saving us precious time in terms of compliance and market availability.
Looking back, how did the Govtechlab innovation challenge contribute to the development of Edonys and Joybiiz?
We rose to the challenge of innovation thanks to the exemplary work of our IT development partner, Technology Partner, and its architect Julien Gras. This success gave us welcome credibility and visibility in the Luxembourg marketplace. And it’s always nice to win the first challenge. It gave us a nice boost of confidence in our abilities.
Can you describe the Joybiiz cashback programme and how it works?
In the case of Joybiiz, cashback technology automates the relationship between a merchant and an individual. The first step is for an employer to subscribe to our meal voucher service (we have other services to come, but we’re sticking to the meal voucher principle). The employer allocates a budget to its employees, and each employee receives an invitation to create a secure Joybiiz account.
The employee is then prompted to synchronise the bank account(s) with which he or she makes daily expenses. This synchronisation takes place via Luxhub and is similar to the login process an employee uses when accessing a banking application. All the employee has to do is live his or her life without changing any of his or her habits. Each time they visit a business eligible to receive meal vouchers--a restaurant, supermarket, etc.--they simply pay using the payment methods they are familiar with. Whether made via a bank card or an app such as Apple Pay, the relevant transactions will be automatically identified securely by Luxhub and reimbursed by Joybiiz to the bank account from which each expenditure was made.
What are the main benefits of Joybiiz compared with Pluxee, another meal voucher fintech solution?
With Joybiiz, there’s no need to use a payment card (Visa, Mastercard, etc.) dedicated to meal vouchers. Our solution also prevents employees from being stuck in restaurants if they don’t have enough money on their meal voucher card to pay the bill. On the other hand, merchants no longer need to pay transaction fees or give change when they receive meal vouchers. This allows us to significantly reduce the fees charged to employers for ordering meal vouchers. It also enables us to simply eliminate all the costs and constraints associated with meal vouchers for merchants. Finally, Joybiiz allows employees to spend their meal vouchers in 100% of eligible stores nationwide.
I would say that one of our main qualities is empathy and our ability to listen to market needs and respond at the right time.
Tell us about Edonys’ partnerships with KPMG Luxembourg, Spuerkeess and Foyer.
Our company has always looked for key partners to help us grow. The first, KPMG Luxembourg, enabled us to develop a professional version of Mytax. Thanks to the confidence of Xavier Martinez (tax partner at KPMG Luxembourg) and his team, we have gained an indispensable legitimacy in the tax sector.
With Spuerkeess, we have opened up a new model by enabling all bank customers to benefit from our Mytax digital tax assistant. A challenge we met with flying colours, no doubt thanks to the responsiveness and quality of work of their IT and Business Innovation teams.
And since 2024, we’ve been working with Foyer to enable more and more taxpayers to optimise their tax affairs and remove the thorn in their side that is the famous tax return.
Can you tell us about your team, your main sources of revenue and your growth plans?
Our company is expanding rapidly. And Joybiiz isn’t the only project you’ll be seeing in 2024. That’s why our team is growing too. Our goal is to double the size of our team by the end of the year. This is essential to support our development. From an ambition point of view, the projects we’re creating are international in scope, and we’re in talks with some big names to broaden our commercial horizons.
I would say that one of our main qualities is empathy and our ability to listen to market needs and respond at the right time. So we’d like to keep our core model of digital services offered on a subscription basis to businesses. And there is no Edonys without partners and customers. It’s up to us to work intelligently to be attractive and enable companies and citizens to live in a fairer, more efficient and more sustainable world.