All_EBT partners with Telos to bring public assistance to the blockchain
Recipients will use Telos-based card to buy food using popular apps like DoorDash and Instacart, as other shoppers do
The social impact startup All_EBT is bringing its public assistance solution to the Telos blockchain, adding another important purpose-driven project to our community.
Supported by funding from Draper Associates, EOS, and Facebook, All_EBT offers a virtual food stamp card that has helped 10,000 low-income people use EBT for online grocery orders and deliveries. Telos will help All_EBT scale this vital service to millions of Americans making it easier to facilitate payments between public assistance programs and digital food couriers like Doordash and Instacart.
The Telos blockchain will be used to create an immutable record of EBT data, which will make it verifiable, auditable, and trackable for users, merchants, and the government. This will improve trust in the system while lowering costs and preventing fraud.
All_EBT’s technology also functions a consumer on-ramp for crypto adoption and financial services, empowering underbanked and low-income communities with access to financial services that might otherwise be unavailable.
“Other than inertia, there has been an unwillingness of public entities to move food assistance programs to digital because they have not developed an easy way to do things like verifying recipients, verifying purchase eligibility, and preventing fraud and other abuse. Blockchain can help fill in all of those gaps,” said Suvi Rinkinen, CEO of the Telos Foundation. “The inability of those most in need of food to apply assistance toward safer options right now like online delivery is only deepening the social divide, weakening society’s safety net, and creating unnecessary health risk.”
“In America alone, more than 22% of the population, 54 million people, live on food stamps. That number has gone up over the last several weeks and months amid the COVID-19 pandemic, making it even harder for people on food stamps to access healthy food and financial services. Families, women, children, and our hardest workers are struggling to put food on the table,” said All_EBT Founder and CEO Eli Calderón Morin. We believe that technology should help solve everyday problems for under-served communities first. Now even more so, All_EBT is helping families access basic financial services and healthy food through its online shopping platform for food stamps so that they can stay safe.”
Public assistance is the latest on a varied list of use case coming to the Telos chain, underscoring its versatility and functionality. There have also been apps for medicine, gaming, messaging, entertainment, and more.
To learn more about about All_EBT or join the waitlist to get their card, visit their website here.
