Across the United States, 22 percent of food-insecure households fall under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) ā what we used to call food stamps ā totalingĀ $126 billion in food assistance per year. However, the spending power that the program allocates monthly is often held back due to a largely analog, physical-only system.
“People on food stamps have mobile phones and are tech-savvy. By having access to use the latest mobile technology and apps to order healthy food, they are able to live healthier lives and take control of their finances,” saysĀ Eli CalderĆ³n Morin, founder and CEO of All_ebt, a smart wallet for food stamps.
SNAP assistance is currently administered with a physical Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card that can only be used at select brick-and-mortar stores. Busy families, elderly individuals, and persons with disabilities are unable to take advantage of the digital economy to save time and transportation costs.
With All_ebt, the user creates a free account via Facebook Messenger and uploads a photo of their EBT card or WIC coupon. That information is added to a virtual wallet and can instantly be used to purchase groceries that adhere to the SNAP restrictions. The money isn’t actually being transferred over the platform, shares Morin; rather, it provides approval to charge the amount necessary for groceries.
The low-income neighborhoods where many SNAP-assisted individuals live often have limited access to well-stocked grocery stores, a phenomenon known as a food desert. That makes access to Amazon Fresh or Instacart even more valuable.
“I grew up on food stamps as a kid. After working in Silicon Valley for over 10 years at startups that were acquired by Google and Amazon, I decided that this was a problem that nobody was going to solve,” says Morin. “I had to solve this problem for the local community, family, and friends living on food stamps.”
“They [SNAP users] have tremendous purchasing power in aggregate, yet remain underserved by consumer technology,” says Morin.
Morin founded the company in Los Angeles, and after attending Charlotte’s Queen City Fintech Accelerator, created a second outpost in the North Carolina city. They’re focusing on three markets:Ā the Southeast, the West Coast and Puerto Rico.
To help sign up users and validate the idea, they’ve set pop-up market stores in LA and Charlotte stocked with essentials.
The team is working with VISA and payment platform Marqeta to create secure, branded All_ebt virtual cards and build the platform’s back-end infrastructure. They were finalists in the Visa Platform Challenge,Ā part of the VISA developer program.
“We know this is a highly regulated space but once we are established, these regulations actually acts as a barrier of entry for other competitors, giving us a significant first move advantage,” says Morin.
Cornering that market will allow the start to become, as Morin puts it, the “Stripe for EBT transactions.” All_ebt is currently bootstrapped and charges aĀ 2.9 percent fee to the merchant for every transaction as its revenue model.
Following the close of a seed round, All_ebt plans to expand their Charlotte-based team and scale across the country.
