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Electronic Benefit Transfer
Public assistance programs in the United States use Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT)
payment cards to issue monthly food and cash benefits to eligible people. EBT cards
function like prepaid debit cards that can be used at authorized retailers. Food
benefits are issued through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which
helps people with low incomes purchase eligible food items.
This feature enables you to submit purchase, credit, and reversal requests on EBT cards
and vouchers. For EBT transactions, only swiped and manually keyed entry are supported. Contactless EMV transactions are not supported.
IMPORTANT
Federal law mandates that you cannot deny an EBT transaction because of technical
problems such as a non-working terminal or a non-working PIN pad.
When a technical
problem prevents you from initiating an EBT transaction, follow these steps:
- Complete an EBT voucher transaction, which is similar to a verbal authorization.
- Telephone the issuer to receive the approval information verbally.
- Capture all of the approval information on one of the paper vouchers that you received with the EBT network device.
- When the EBT system is back online, enter the voucher information into the EBT device to complete the transaction.