Uber Eats have announced they will now accept food stamps as a form of payment.
The company will launch the payment option next year and people who are in the U.S. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, will be able to use their benefits to purchase groceries off the Uber Eats app.
Uber also announced that it will soon be accepting flexible spending account cards, Flex cards, and state waiver payments made through Managed Medicaid and Medicare Advantage plans. According to a statement, the company is implementing this new payment option to reduce “barriers to fresh groceries” in places with little access to quality food.
Instacart and Amazon have already incorporated food stamps as payment for online food purchases. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 41 million people received SNAP benefits in June, which made it the largest food assistance program in the country.
The USDA first allowed food stamps in 2019 when they launched a program that started in New York State and branched out to all 50 states in June. Walmart and Amazon partnered with the USDA as part of the program.
Instacart paired up with the USDA to give SNAP recipients the chance to shop online, while announcing in August that they would expand the option to all 50 states.
Aside from new payment options on their app, Uber recently made headlines after a driver allegedly asked a customer to pay for their gas. In June, someone using the Uber Eats app claimed their driver asked them for gas money.
The customer, Exavier Pope, took to Twitter to share screenshots of his alleged conversation with his driver. “This Uber Eats Driver just asked me to CashApp him gas money to bring my food to me,” Pope tweeted.
In the screenshot, the driver said to Pope, “I’m gonna run outta gas, can you cash app me a few bucks for gas please, I had no idea u were that far.” In a follow-up tweet, the customer wrote that the driver had called him five times, saying it was “harassment.”
Their message conversation continued, with Pope calling the driver “unprofessional” and the driver apologizing.
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