Cash Assistance Reaches Instacart

To help the White House's goal of improving nutrition and preventing diet-related diseases, Target Corp's Shipt and Instacart grocery delivery services will offer new payment methods for U.S. shoppers with low incomes.
Joe Biden announced last Tuesday that he plans to increase healthy eating initiatives and end the country's hunger by 2030. He plans to allow shopping online with food stamps, TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), and WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children).

Instacart has allowed certain grocers to accept food stamps for the past two years and intends to have TANF included in 2023. It is also attempting to integrate food stamp purchases into all retail partners.
Over 21 million American households are food stamp users, and almost 3 million families order groceries online. Food stamps allow the purchase of cold food products, nonalcoholic beverages, plants, and seeds.
Different payment alternatives may help businesses win over grocery shoppers with low incomes away from Amazon.com AMZN & Walmart.com WMT.N, which also offer food stamp payments.
TANF provides cash benefits to over 783,000 households to help them purchase essential items such as toiletries.

Instacart's new addition of TANF will now cover service fees, delivery fees, and non-grocery products. These are all benefits that SNAP EBT did not previously cover. The company waived food stamp purchase delivery fees, which were $3.99.
With the delivery company Shipt, you'll be able to pay for your orders with food stamps (SNAP EBT) starting in 2023. The company already allows SNAP payments through its website for the grocery retailer Meijer. Customers can use their SNAP EBT card at Target.com to make grocery purchases online. Shipt then powers these deliveries.
Shipt Chief Executive, Kamau Witherspoon, said in a press release that the delivery company plans to distribute its expanded services early next year.

There are no TANF or WIC payment alternatives through Shipt yet. Currently, Instacart doesn't provide WIC payments. The WIC online pilot program, created by the USDA, has Walmart as its largest U.S. retailer participant. However, on Wednesday, no mention was made regarding any additions to its existing low-income shopper services.
Amazon offers government assistance program participants Prime memberships at a discount of $6.99 monthly. But, benefits cannot be used to pay for subscriptions. An Amazon Prime membership is normally $14.99 monthly.
Amazon shoppers who use SNAP EBT can get additional discounts of up to 15% on select produce, meats, and toiletries purchased at Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh.
Amazon has not yet responded to requests for comment on whether the company has any announcements about the White House health initiatives.