DoorDash and Walgreens Team to Offer SNAP/EBT Payments

DoorDash has teamed with Walgreens to offer SNAP/EBT payments at nearly 7,800 locations.

According to its announcement Wednesday (April 24), DoorDash is the first platform that enables SNAP customers to make purchases directly from Walgreens with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards and the first third-party delivery service provider to offer SNAP/EBT as a payment option at a major, nationwide drugstore.

“Since launching support for SNAP/EBT payments in 2023, over 1.1 million consumers have added their SNAP/EBT cards to DoorDash,” Fuad Hannon, vice president of new verticals for DoorDash, said in a news release.

“This first-of-its-kind partnership with Walgreens offers convenient and critical access to food and pantry essentials for families and individuals across the country.”

DoorDash introduced its SNAP/EBT offering last summer. As PYMNTS wrote at the time, it was part of a wave of grocers integrating these payments both into their own direct ordering channels and into their third-party storefronts.

In addition, grocery aggregator Instacart has been working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to expand SNAP EBT access to Instacart grocery partners in all 50 states, with the goal of extending these payments to all those partners by 2030.

With this new partnership, Walgreens “shoppers can now get essential grocery items when they want, regardless of payment method and other barriers like work schedules and transportation,” Walgreens Chief Product Officer Balachandra Visalatha said in the announcement.

In related news, Uber Eats recently teamed with Forage to offer online purchasing and delivery of groceries to SNAP/EBT recipients. Uber Eats is set to launch this offering in late 2024, with Forage acting as that firm’s SNAP EBT payment processor.

This partnership will help serve the 17 million Americans who live in “food deserts,” with limited access to fresh food from grocery stores, the companies said in a news release, noting that digital food delivery services such as Uber Eats are accessible to 90% of those Americans.

And Amazon this week announced the launch of a new grocery subscription in more than 3,500 locations around the U.S., offering unlimited free delivery on orders over $35 to Prime members for an additional $9.99 per month and to EBT recipients for $4.99 a month.

As noted here this week, online marketplaces are falling behind in online grocery, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and Adobe report “How Preferred Payment Availability Can Reduce Cart Abandonment.”

“While often consumers choose to make purchases from online marketplaces rather than retailers’ or brands’ websites or mobile apps, in grocery, shopper behaviors tell a different story,” PYMNTS wrote. “Forty-four percent of consumers prefer retailers’ websites or apps when shopping for groceries online, while only 29% prefer online marketplaces and 24% prefer brands’ sites or apps, indicating that consumers’ digital loyalty lies with the grocery stores themselves.”

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