Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Social services beneficiaries in California are being advised that their EBT cards may not work for a 24-hour period in late June, because of a planned service interruption in order to work on the system.

Social services beneficiaries in California are being advised that their EBT cards may not work for a 24-hour period in late June, because of a planned service interruption in order to work on the system.

California counties are advising beneficiaries of the CalFresh and CalWorks programs to prepare for the fact that their EBT access cards may not work for a 24-hour period from 11 pm June 23 through 11 pm on June 24 due to a planned service outage.

EBT debit card, which replaced food stamps, are used in the CalFresh program to purchase authorized food at retailers that have been permitted  by the government to accept the cards for payment. The cards are also used by participants of the CalWorks program to make cash withdrawals.

Because of the temporary service disruption, the customer service number listed on each EBT card will also be inoperable during the same 24-hour period as will be the state EBT website, www.ebt.ca.gov.

Beneficiaries of the two assistance programs are advised to food shop in advance of the system shutdown and to make any necessary cash withdrawals in advance.