Sponsors (5)
The bill strengthens EBT security and access for SNAP recipients—reducing fraud, speeding replacements, and cutting beneficiary fees—while shifting costs, administrative burdens, and some privacy/security risks onto federal/state budgets, retailers, and program administrators that must be managed to avoid disrupting access.
Low-income SNAP participants will get more secure, chip-enabled EBT cards that reduce card-cloning and online theft, lowering benefit losses.
SNAP households will receive replacement EBT cards faster (within about 3 business days), cutting interruptions to food benefits.
Beneficiaries will no longer pay replacement fees for malfunctioning, expired, or fraud-affected EBT cards, reducing out-of-pocket costs.
Preparing and implementing the upgrades, reimbursing states, and producing reports will increase federal and state costs and may raise taxpayer burden.
Upfront costs for chip-enabled terminals could strain small or rural retailers; some may stop accepting SNAP, reducing nearby redemption options for beneficiaries.
States and agencies face substantial logistical and administrative burdens (procurement, vendor coordination, training, reporting, system changes) that could strain capacity and temporarily disrupt benefits access.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Strengthens EBT cybersecurity: requires chip-enabled/mobile EBT, faster/no-fee replacements in many cases, chip terminals at stores, state reimbursements, and online-theft reporting.
Requires upgraded cybersecurity for SNAP Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) systems: the USDA must issue rules to move EBT cards and mobile EBT tools to chip-enabled, mobile-friendly, NIST-aligned security; require states to reissue magnetic-stripe cards to chip cards within a phased timeline; reimburse states for reasonable upgrade costs; and bar some replacement fees. It also mandates faster replacement card delivery, chip-enabled payment terminals at authorized retail locations, new rules and reporting to detect and prevent online benefit theft, and a focused report on EBT card cloning in Puerto Rico.
Introduced February 24, 2026 by Daniel Goldman · Last progress February 24, 2026