CalFresh, CalWORKS EBT Card Outage June 23-24

The state of California transition to a new Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) vendor for the swipe machines requires a statewide, 24-hour EBT card program outage. The black-out period is scheduled from Saturday, June 23 at 11 p.m. until Sunday, June 24, at 11:00 p.m.

During this machine outage, cardholders will not be able to access their EBT food or cash benefits or the website or customer service call center to check their benefit balances. 

Also unavailable during the outage are:

• the EBT client website at http://www.ebt.ca.gov
• the EBT Customer Service Help Line (1-877-328-9677). Callers will receive a recorded message about the outage, available in 11 languages; Armenian, Cambodian, Cantonese, English, Farsi, Hmong, Lao, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese.

The state mailed notices statewide to CalFreshand CalWORKS (locally called SonomaWORKS)clients the first week of June. Additionally, County of Sonoma Human Services Department staff are notifying clients and posting notifications in office lobbies. All retailers who accept EBT cards were also notified by the state and encouraged to inform their staffs and EBT clients.

This scheduled, one-time outage supports the transition of EBT vendor services from Conduent (formerly Xerox) to Fidelity Information Services (FIS).

The Human Services Departmentmanages the local CalFresh and SonomaWORKS programs, which provide eligible, low-income residents monthly benefits on an ATM-style plastic card, called an Electronic Benefit Transfer or EBT card. Clients can that use the benefits on the card to purchase food and basic incidentals at stores and markets and get cash aid.