The U.S. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, historically and commonly known as the Food Stamp Program, is a federal assistance program that provides assistance to low-income or no-income individuals and families living in the United States. Although the program is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, benefits are distributed by the various states of the Union.
It provides benefits to eligible low-income individuals and families through an electronic benefit transfer card. This card can be used as a debit card to purchase eligible food at authorized retail stores.
Today, all food stamp benefits are distributed through cards, but for most of its history the program has actually used denominational paper stamps or coupons6 with a value of $1 (colored brown), $5 (colored blue), and $10 (colored green).
These stamps can be used to purchase all edible prepackaged foods, regardless of their nutritional value (e.g., soft drinks and candy can be purchased with food stamps). In the late 1990s, the food stamp program was modernized and the actual stamps were eliminated in favor of a specialized debit card system known as Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT)7 provided by private contractors. Many states merged the use of the EBT card for public assistance welfare programs as well.
The successful replacement over time of all paper food stamps with EBT cards allowed the U.S. Congress to change the name of the Food Stamp Program to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, effective October 2008, and to update all references in federal law from «stamp» or «coupon» to «card» or «EBT».