SNAP / Benefits.gov

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — commonly known as SNAP, and previously as food stamps — is the largest food assistance program in the United States, serving more than 40 million people each month. Administered by the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service, SNAP benefits are delivered through Electronic Benefit Transfer cards that work at authorized retailers nationwide. The federal government manages the benefit issuance infrastructure and the national EBT network while individual states handle enrollment, eligibility determinations, and account management through their own portals and apps. The result is a layered system with both federal and state components that can fail independently.

The EBT infrastructure runs through a contracted national network — historically managed by companies like Conduent and Fidelity National Information Services — that processes card transactions at point-of-sale terminals. State-level portals and apps like ConnectEBT, ebtEDGE, and state-specific benefits portals allow cardholders to check balances, view transaction histories, and in some states manage their cases. Federal systems handle benefit issuance schedules and fund transfers to state accounts. Failures in the federal payment pipeline, the state portal, or the EBT processing network can each manifest as service disruptions for cardholders.

SNAP outages affect people who rely on the program for food security, making downtime acutely harmful. When the EBT network is down, cards are declined at registers even when benefits are available — a particularly disruptive experience at checkout. Balance inquiry calls and app lookups return errors or show outdated information. State portal logins fail. In some incidents, benefit issuance delays mean cards reflect a zero balance that should have been replenished. P-EBT and SNAP Emergency Allotment distributions have also experienced technical failures during high-demand periods.

Outage.gg tracks SNAP and EBT system reports from cardholders and caseworkers across the country. If your EBT card is being declined, the balance lookup is failing, or the state benefits portal is down, the live status page shows whether others are affected.