Good news the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program has now been added to the list of ways to pay when visiting Amazon.com. You can now purchase various foodstuff hassle-free from Amazon, the world’s largest retailer. This comes as a result of the 2014 Farm Bill, which required the conduction of a feasibility test on allowing the acceptance of SNAP benefits by retail food stores for online purchase of healthy foodstuff.
SNAP, previously called food stamps, is a nutrition program initiated and run by the US federal government to help low-income households and individuals in the country to have more purchasing power for healthy food. According to a blog post by the director of underserved populations at Amazon, Kristina Herrmann, Amazon is now allowing SNAP beneficiaries from seven states to buy groceries from its online store using their food stamp benefits. Amazon says that this arrangement is a pilot program (among other participating retail stores) with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
This new shopping convenience comes as great news especially during this time when the demand for online delivery of groceries, among other essential household items, has increased significantly due to the COVID-19 social distancing requirement.
According to Amazon, this new online shopping development will see more SNAP benefit recipients from the selected states have improved access to food. In her blog post, Hermann, who also leads the participation of Amazon in this new online purchasing pilot program, says that the food accessibility improvement will be a great relief for the SNAP fund beneficiaries who live in the rural or remote areas of the states.
The States involved
At this time not every state is participating with the Pilot program. As of right now the pilot program only covers selected states. These states are California, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, New York, Washington and Oregon.
Amazon Prime membership is not mandatory
SNAP recipients don’t have to sign up for Amazon Prime membership to order food items from the online retail store. All they need to do is to sign up for SNAP Online Purchasing, create an account on Amazon and add their SNAP Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card to the account. Then, one can proceed to place their orders through Amazon Fresh. This way, Amazon Prime Membership will not be necessary. Amazingly, SNAP benefit orders for grocery placed through Amazon Fresh or Amazon Pantry come with free shipping.
However, free shipping is subject to the set order minimums.
Only selected items qualify
SNAP website indicates that only the products that are within the program’s remittance guidelines are eligible for purchase from Amazon through SNAP Online Purchasing. These products are fruits, vegetables, meat, dairy products, fish, poultry, bread, cereals, non-alcoholic beverages, snacks as well as seeds and plants for household food production.
On the other hand, SNAP benefits CANNOT be used to purchase some Amazon products such as alcoholic beverages, tobacco, cigarettes, nutritional supplements, already-prepared food for immediate use, non-food items, and some live animals.
Safety
The eligible shoppers have nothing to worry about this new online purchase process as far as the security of their transactions is concerned. USDA, through it's website, assures that the process is secure as it is when a person pays for groceries at an offline grocery store using their SNAP funds.
Do you qualify for SNAP benefits and would like to use your SNAP funds to purchase foodstuffs from Amazon? Simply create an account on Amazon, add your SNAP EBT card to the account.
Visit www.Amazon.com/SNAP/Register to complete the remaining set of instructions to enable the purchase.
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