People planning to pay for food early Thursday morning were greeted at 24/7 convenience stores with a message -- "No EBT."
DownDetector tracked EBT issues picking up around midnight ET Thursday nationwide.
By 6 a.m. ET, the reported outages appeared to be subsiding.
The exact root of the payment issue wasn't clear.
What are SNAP benefits?
"Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) is an electronic system that allows a Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participant to pay for food using SNAP benefits," the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Nutrition Service says. "When a participant shops at a SNAP authorized retail store, their SNAP EBT account is debited to reimburse the store for food that was purchased."
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The USDA overnight didn't post any message about issues with EBT outages.
