Sola announced EBT chip support for eligible integrations on September 16, letting grocery software partners process the chip-enabled Electronic Benefits Transfer cards that states are now issuing. The Brooklyn company is a payments platform serving businesses and software partners, and it already processed EBT on magnetic stripe. This extends that to chip.

The shift to chip is meant to cut the skimming and card-cloning that has plagued benefits cards for years. SNAP moves billions of dollars in food assistance and has run on some of the least secure card technology still in wide use.

The Agriculture Department has been pushing states toward EMV chips and tap-to-pay for several years. Some began issuing as early as the summer of 2024, and the pace has varied by state ever since.

The Transition Is Already Under Way

The easy version of this story is that states will get to chip eventually. They are getting there now. Virginia began issuing EBT chip cards in September. Pilot localities receive them by October 1, and every customer in the state is due one by December 31.

The detail that matters for grocers is what happens to the old card. A customer magnetic stripe card deactivates 60 days after the new chip card is mailed. Retailers were told to have point-of-sale devices updated by September 2026 or risk being unable to process benefits at all.

That window is tighter than it looks. The Virginia Retail Federation, citing other states, puts the update, certification and testing cycle at up to nine months.

What EBT Chip Support Requires From Partners

An EBT chip card is not an ordinary bank chip card. It carries its own application identifier and a service code on the stripe. That code tells the terminal to ask for an insert or a tap rather than accept a swipe. Point-of-sale software has to be updated specifically for EBT chip, not just for chip in general.

Sola is not shipping a switch that partners flip. The capability arrives in the latest version of its Payment Engine, the software connecting partner applications to payment devices. The release says magstripe transactions keep working while partners update their own integrations and receipt formats. Chief product officer Markiyan Malko frames it as giving partners what their merchants need to keep processing as states switch over. Support is initially limited to eligible configurations on Verifone Engage devices, with Sola Terminal, the company proprietary terminal application, expected by the end of 2026.

There is a safety valve. Systems can be configured to fall back to magnetic stripe when an EBT chip card cannot be read. That buys a store time rather than solving the problem. The National Grocers Association runs a technical assistance center for the switchover, which is a fair measure of how much coordination it takes.

Who Depends on This

The merchants affected are independent and regional grocers. They are the least likely to run modern payment infrastructure and the most dependent on a software vendor to carry them through a technical transition.

A national chain manages a card technology change with its own payments team. A regional grocery software provider serving independent stores does not. It relies on its processor to have EBT chip ready before its state finishes issuing. Benefit theft lands on low-income households, who bear the disruption when benefits vanish from a card.

Unglamorous Work That Retains Partners

Sola is the 2024 combination of Fidelity Payment Services, a processor, and Cardknox, a gateway. Compliance-driven feature work supporting a government benefits migration does not win a payments company headlines.

It does win retained partners. Chief technology officer Sandra Blair framed the release as showing “the value of moving early as payment requirements change.” The company also says support remains limited across the market, which is a competitive claim rather than a verified market count.

What to Watch

The test is not the EBT chip support. It is timing, and the timing is now rather than next year. States are moving at different paces, and partners that are not ready when their state finishes issuing risk losing merchants to a stack that is.

Two things are worth checking as the rollouts land. The first is whether Sola Terminal support arrives by the end of 2026 as promised. The second is whether partners on devices other than Verifone Engage get an answer before their state retires magstripe.

Fintechbits covers payments infrastructure, benefits technology and retail point of sale. Nothing here constitutes financial or investment advice. All analysis represents the editorial views of Fintechbits.