Can EBT be used for online purchases?
There are technical reasons why SNAP EBT cards cannot be accepted by online shopping services. Currently, only credit cards are accepted as payment for Internet purchases. Some sites accept debit (ATM) cards, but only if they are branded with a MasterCard or Visa logo. Branded debit cards can be treated like credit cards if a seller decides to accept them that way. These types of sales do not require the customer to enter his or her personal identification number (PIN). EBT transactions performed at the store are done with a point of service (POS) terminal. There are very strict encryption requirements for the PIN entry piece of the POS terminal. This keeps the customer’s PIN secret. With EBT cards, the PIN is the only thing that guarantees that the person using the card is authorized. There is not a similar level of security for entering PINs over the Internet, even with newer browsers that have 128-bit encryption. This is because they have to convert the PIN from Internet-style encry
