Background:
Mandela Produce Distribution (MPD) is a community-based food hub located in West Oakland that increases access to local, sustainably-grown fresh produce while supporting the economic success of small-scale BIPOC farmers. Mandela sells produce and offers a weekly CSA box for delivery and pickup. Their website is https://shopmandela.com/. Mandela wanted to allow people to use their SNAP EBT benefits online.
Needs / Challenges
- Customers Want Delivery and Order Online for Pick-Up: In addition to their Co-Op food retail store, Mandela delivers fresh produce weekly to customers in and around Oakland California. Many of their customers use Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBTs), formerly food stamps, and prefer to order online for both convenience and to avoid the stigma of using EBTs in person.
- Scheduling Complexities for Deliveries and Pickups: Customers are busy and want deliveries and pickups to coincide with their schedule. However, the business has its schedule of when produce comes in for processing, the time to repackage, and when employees work, plus, they have three possible locations for pick-up and offer home delivery once a week. For example, if you order for Thursday pickup, it will be at a different location than Wednesday’s pickup location, and deliveries are on Thursday-Friday, but Farmers Markets are on weekends. It can be mindboggling all the different scenarios.
Solution to Schedule Online Orders by Day for Pickup with EBT
Solution to Schedule Online Orders for Pickup with EBT
- Order fulfillment and management: It doesn’t get easier. Coordinating stock levels, preparing orders, and knowing if an order was paid for, picked up, or delivered at multiple locations can be daunting. To get approval from the USDA/FNS to accept EBTs online, merchants must be able to provide proof of delivery or proof that the goods were picked up, which aids in the effort for the USDA/FNS to reduce fraud.
- USDA/FNS Approval: store owners’ website must be approved by the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of the USDA, which oversees and allocates the $130,000,000,000.00 annual budget for EBTs. The USDA/FNS vets each website, and tests to ensure it meets their 130-page technical requirements. This process takes three to four months on average.
- Split payment requirements: Programming the checkout cart to recalculate the balance after any amount is entered is tricky. The requirement is that EBT customers can put in any amount of money up to the balance limit. For example, if the cart total is $20, but the customer only wants to use $8, of their EBT card, then the cart must recalculate and ask the customer how they want to pay for the remaining $ 12 balance. The balance can be paid with any of these options: Debit/credit, cash, or mobile payment. Thus, the checkout cart must be able to recalculate itself with the proper balances and charge as a spit payment to each payment method quickly and intuitively.
Checkout Cart SNAP EBT Subtotal, EBT Cash Subtotals
- Receipt requirements: The receipt must be itemized, and show the last four digits of the payment method used, the EBT remaining balance, how much was charged to each payment method, and display that no tax was charged to any EBT items.
- Proof of delivery requirements: How do you know if was delivered or picked up? It’s required to keep track of what has been picked up or delivered, as well as the time, date, and address.
- Refunds requirements: Merchants must be able to refund back to the EBT card used and show the remaining SNAP EBT and Cash EBT balance. And, partial refunds are required. For example, if an order is short one avocado, and it was paid for with EBT, the food retailer must be able to refund the price of just the one avocado back to the EBT account it was originally purchased with. The refund can not be store credit, cash, or a gift card.
- Charging for delivery/shipping: Food retailers can not charge for delivery more than seven (7) days in advance. Delivery and shipping fees can not be charged to SNAP EBT, but they can be paid with Cash EBT, debit/credit, Apple Pay, or Google Pay. Merchants can not make recurring charges with SNAP and Cash EBT payment methods, but they can send a reminder to customers to approve their reoccurring orders.
How Pay Now Direct Solution Meets the Challenges:
- Order online with EBT for pickup, delivery, or shipping.
- Integration with in-store Point of Sale (POS) registers.
- Reoccurring billing for non-ebt customers.
- Schedule deliveries and pickups by day, but not more than seven days in advance per USDA/FNS requirements.
- Schedule delivery and pickups by product availability in real-time- even with multiple locations, and by radius, zip code, state, and country.
- Split payments between SNAP EBT/Debit/Credit/Apple Pay/Google Pay/ EBT Cash / eWIC and the ability to recalculate the cart balance after the customer enters any amount for SNAP EBT/Cash EBT/debit/credit.
- Mobile Responsive Website that allows merchants to quickly code their inventory with what items are SNAP EBT and Cash EBT eligible.
- Visual indicators (yellow/green banner on images) depicting which items are SNAP EBT and Cash EBT eligible- also, a USDA/FNS requirement.
- PIN PAD Both In-store and Online
- Single merchant processing with EBT, debt/credit, Apple Pay, and Google Pay with next-day deposits directly to the food retailer’s bank account.
- Online portal showing each charge, payment method, customer name, and date/time.
- Includes free Inventory management (ERP), order management, customer relationship management (CRM), SEO, security, and analytics programs.
