Will Square ever be able to accept Electronic Benefit Card (EBT) payments?

[MichaelJMutch]

Will Square ever be able to accept Electronic Benefit Card (EBT) (food stamps) payments?

[MayaP]

Hello there @StricksMeats thanks for reaching out and submitting this request. I am sorry the Totil Pay integration is not working out for you, that is a bummer to hear! 

Although we offer the integration it is owned by Totil Pay, so they would need to ultimately make the changes. But if you have any specific feedback our team can pass along to the partners I am happy to do so. This feature is not on the Product Team's roadmap and is not something that plans to be implemented. If you do know other sellers looking for this feature I would have them comment on this request with their business need for this feature, which will make this request stronger and demonstrate further how much it is needed. Later on, we'll re-visit the most popular feature requests in the "Open for Votes" status and bring them to product teams. To learn more about how feature requests work, please see this post (squ.re/Ideate-Commuity) from one of our Seller Community Moderators.

Thank you so much again for your input! 

[WRFJen]

As another farm-to-table business (we sell beef from our cattle to our community) we were very interested in getting into EBT sales, but it looks like I'll be looking at other providers since the feedback I have seen on the single option with Square has been subpar, to put it gently.

Please make adding a fully integrated EBT payment feature a priority.

[WRFJen]

@MayaP I am another Square seller that would love to see other options on taking EBT, as I have not heard great things about Totil Pay as an option (clunky, issues, ect). I chose Square as my payment processor for speed and ease of use, but if I cannot take EBT with that same level of ease, I will need to find another option for those payment types as that is critical for my business in my area. Please do what you can to make this a priority.

[OwensMarket]

I can never get a straight answer from Totil. They keep telling me that I must have their system and drop square. I am trying to find out what equipment I need to take EBT using Square and their system integration. 

[refillz]

agreed that totilpay is not a great system. Square, please implement.

[CPspecialtystor]

I would agree. There is a lot of mixed messaging and I don't think pawning off the problem to Totilpay is fair. It seems like this shouldn't be a big ask given the current number of options there are to pay in Square currently. How hard or long would it really take to implement this connenction directly? Given Square has a "Grocery & Convenience" business focus under Retail - EBT/SNAP is a bit part of sales for this segment. Please work on a direct fix as I was told by my salesperson that this was in the works. Thank you as I may need to switch providers as well given I just received approval for EBT acceptance. Thank you!

[StricksMeats]

EBT/SNAP is a huge part of "Grocery & Convenience" 

It's pretty sad that a company with as many resources as Square will not help service the lower income America.  

Come on Square, let's get on it already!

[SchubertPro]

Just got approved for EBT and I am hesitant to use Totalipay because no one seems to like it. This would be a much appreciated integration into the existing Square framework. Seems like an odd pairing anyway since Totalipay is basically telling customers to drop Square and use them for everything. 🤔

[GJJHarris]

Our business as well would benefit from implementing the EBT feature into Square. Currently, we have to use an old school Verifone credit card processor to accept EBT payments, which seems like a step back in the wrong direction of technology. Please consider adding this on to our acceptable forms of payment!

[092]

I also understand the annoyance of needing to use another company to accept EBT cards, personally we are still using the same company to accept EBT since before we switched to Square. While I understand now that Square is NEVER adding EBT by the way they respond, it only makes sense that they give us the ability to separate items automatically at checkout. For Example, if a customer is buying an energy drink and a bag of chips, there would already be an option in those items saying one item is EBT Applicable and the other saying EBT NON-Applicable. This is would be better solution for us, if they aren't going to add the ability to accept EBT at all.