Amazon’s Grocery Delivery Service Will Soon Accept Food Stamps

Amazon will begin accepting food stamps from customers who place orders on the service’s online grocery program, according to a new report.

The Department of Agriculture recently announced a two-year pilot program that would expand the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The pilot, due to start sometime this summer, will allow poorer Americans to pay for online grocery orders using federal assistance, according to Quartz. To start, the SNAP expansion will be available in seven states across the U.S., mostly in the northeast.

Amazon customers in Maryland, New Jersey and New York will be eligible for the SNAP pilot. Other stores taking part in the program include FreshDirect, Hart’s Local Grocers, and Dash’s Market in New York; Safeway in Maryland, Oregon and Washington; ShopRite in Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania; and Hy-Vee in Iowa.

“Online purchasing is a potential lifeline for SNAP participants living in urban neighborhoods and rural communities where access to health food choices can be limited,” USDA spokesperson Tom Vilsack said in a statement. “We’re looking forward to being able to bring the benefits of the online market to low-income Americans participating in SNAP.”

Like Vilsack said, the program could obviously help foster access to healthy groceries for Americans living in food deserts. Additionally, it could reduce some of the stigma of using federal food stamps. Beyond aiding SNAP recipients, the pilot also offers Amazon an opportunity to cash in on the lower-income food market — an area where it has usually yielded to Walmart, USA Today reported.

Amazon operates a grocery-delivery store called Fresh, which costs $14.99 a month — but is only available to existing Amazon Prime members. A membership for that costs $99, yearly. At those prices, online grocery services are all but affordable for Americans using food stamps — although the SNAP program still won’t cover delivery or membership fees.

SNAP has distributed over $66 billion in federal assistance to over 43 million low-income Americans. Of the one in seven people who receive food stamps, half of are children and 10 percent are over 60, according to the USDA.

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