Xerox: EBT Cards Back In Service Nationwide

BOSTON (CBS/AP) -- Xerox announced late Saturday night that access had been restored for EBT benefit card users in 17 states affected by an outage, hours after the first problems were reported.

"Re-starting the EBT system required time to ensure service was back at full functionality," spokeswoman Jennifer Wasmer said in an email.

An emergency voucher process was available in some of the areas while the problems were occurring, Wasmer said.

Beginning late Saturday morning, people in Massachusetts and 16 other states found themselves temporarily unable to use their food stamp debit-style cards, after a routine test of backup systems by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure.

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