The SNAP program and the EBT system were down for several hours on Sunday
According to Down Detector, there were reports of an outage impacting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on Sunday across the whole country.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, often known as SNAP, offers nutritional benefits to low-income families in order to supplement their food budgets and enable them to purchase healthful food. Electronic Payments Transfer, often known as EBT, is an electronic system that functions similarly to a debit card and enables participants of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to use their SNAP benefits to pay for food.
The Department of Social Services of South Carolina sent out the following message via Twitter on Sunday afternoon: “DSS is aware of EBT processing issues with approved retailers, impacting the ability for clients to use their EBT cards, due to a third party processor outage impacting programs in multiple states.”
The department tweeted Sunday evening: “The third party processor for EBT cards has confirmed to DSS that all systems have been restored and cards issued to clients should be operational statewide at approved EBT retailers.”
The Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance tweeted Sunday afternoon: “DTA has been informed by the state’s EBT vendor that the EBT system is currently down in Massachusetts & some other states. You will not be able to use your EBT card or check your real time balance at this time. However, retailers may be able to manually authorize your purchase.”
The department tweeted an update Sunday evening, writing: “DTA has been informed by the state’s EBT vendor that the EBT system is currently back up and running. The agency will continue to monitor the system. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
As of 12 a.m. ET, Down Detector was showing around 350 reports of an outage, down from a peak of 5,019 around 2:50 p.m.
