(a) Financial
assistance and employment and child care payments to eligible persons shall be
issued in the form of EBT or imprest check.
(1) The general method of payment shall be by
EBT to the eligible primary payee.
(2) The money shall be transferred to an EBT
account or direct deposited into a financial institution account designated by
the primary payee.
(3) The EBT
account shall be accessed by any individual who has an EBT card and a valid
PIN.
(A) The household's cash benefits may be
accessed through ATMs or through POS devices at retail establishments who are
participating in the cash-back option under the EBT program.
(B) The department shall provide two free ATM
transactions per month and recipients will be assessed a [recipients will be
assessed a] transaction fee for all subsequent transactions. The household may
also be assessed a surcharge fee, which is unrelated to the transaction fee, on
all ATM transactions by the ATM owner.
(4) Benefits shall be issued by imprest check
if necessary to meet requirements as described in section
17-681-9.
(b)
Occasionally an ATM may misdispense less cash to a recipient than what was
requested. The cause of the misdispensement may be due to a system time-out or
a problem with the telecommunication line anywhere between the ATM, the
processor, the Gateway or the EBT system. Whenever a recipient experiences a
misdispensement at an ATM, the recipient shall:
(1) Report the error to the EBT customer
service to file a trouble ticket;
(2) Report the problem of the misdispensement
to the unit to request a provisional credit; and
(3) Sign a statement attesting to the
misdispensement and provide all the pertinent information, i.e., the date,
time, location and the amount of the misdispensement. The client shall also
acknowledge that if the audit investigation of the misdispensement proves to be
false:
(A) The amount of the provisional
credit that was credited into the household's EBT account shall be immediately
debited from the household's EBT account;
(B) If the balance in the household's EBT
account is insufficient to cover the amount of the provisional credit, the
provisional credit amount shall be debited from the benefits deposited in the
next month;
(C) If no funds are
deposited into the EBT account in the next month, or if the department was
unable to debit the account before the household accessed the benefits, a claim
in the amount equal to the provisional credit amount shall be established
against the household; and
(D) The
fraud provisions as specified in chapter 17-604.1 shall be imposed against the
household.
(c)
If the household received more cash from the ATM than what was originally
requested, the household shall be responsible to report the overage to the ATM
owner and to the household's case worker. The household may be liable for any
excess amount that was misdispensed by the ATM, and may be subject to the
requirements specified in section 17-681-57.
(d) SNAP benefits to eligible households
shall be issued in the form of EBT. The EBT account shall be accessed by any
individual who has an EBT card and a valid PIN. SNAP benefits may be accessed
through:
(1) POS devices at SNAP certified
retail stores that have the capability to electronically process EBT
transactions; or
(2) Manual
off-line voucher process for those SNAP certified retailers who do not have a
POS device but are certified by the EBT contractor to accept EBT transactions.
Manual off-line vouchers may also be used by POS merchants when normal EBT
electronic processing is not possible. Recipients will not be assessed any
transaction fees for purchases made with their SNAP benefits.
