The grocery industry has endorsed the Ensuring Fee-Free Benefit Transactions (EBT) Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation introduced by Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, vice ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, and Rep. Tony Wied, R-Wis., House Agriculture Committee member and onetime small-business owner and retailer. The act would permanently prohibit additional fees from being imposed on retailers for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) electronic benefit transfer (EBT) transactions. “Independent grocers are on the front lines of the fight against food insecurity, investing heavily in technology and training to ensure SNAP works for families who rely on it,” said Stephanie Johnson, group VP for government relations at Washington, D.C.-based NGA. “The EBT Act is a necessary and commonsense solution to protect community-based retailers from new swipe fees that could compromise their ability to provide SNAP benefits and threaten food access in low-income areas.” The EBT Act would make permanent a provision in the 2018 Farm Bill that prohibits states and state contractors from levying processing and other related fees from a state’s side of a SNAP EBT transaction on SNAP-authorized retailers. While a permanent ban on interchange or swipe fees in SNAP already exists, the EBT Act applies the same permanent ban on state-side transaction fees. SNAP-authorized retailers must pay for their side of the costs associated with SNAP EBT transactions, but processing or other related fees outside of retailers’ control have never before been imposed on SNAP-authorized retailers. With the transition to chip cards and mobile payments, grocers are incurring considerable software and hardware costs, and many operators worry that EBT processors may begin charging fees for SNAP transactions, similar to the fees imposed on non-SNAP debit and credit card purchases. Such fees would be a hardship for independent grocers, many of whom operate on razor-thin margins of 1.4%, according to NGA. “Grocers already absorb significant upfront and ongoing costs to participate in SNAP, from purchasing EBT-compliant point-of-sale systems to training staff and ensuring program compliance,” added Johnson. “Adding processing fees would punish retailers for serving vulnerable populations.”