Forage, a payments processor that makes it easier for grocers to accept SNAP EBT payments online, announced today that it has raised a $22M Series A funding round to accelerate online grocery access for America’s 42 million SNAP EBT recipients. The round was led by fintech specialist firm Nyca with participation from PayPal Ventures, EO Ventures, and prominent angels including Apoorva Mehta, founder of Instacart. Forage will use the funds primarily for product development and accelerate hiring to meet the high demand for the company’s solutions.

“This capital will help accelerate Forage’s mission to democratize access to government benefits. We’re proud of the technology we’ve built and are excited to expand the acceptance of SNAP EBT payments online for low-income Americans.”

                                                                    Ofek Lavian, co-founder and CEO of Forage.

Eight percent of Americans rely on government assistance to pay for their groceries. Only a small portion of the more than 250,000 brick-and-mortar businesses that receive SNAP benefits through in-store EBT has been given approval for online EBT. Many SNAP beneficiaries are housebound, don’t have access to transportation, or reside in areas where grocery stores are difficult to reach. Many others choose to avoid in-person shopping because they are worried about COVID. During the pandemic, many Americans were able to switch to online food shopping, but SNAP beneficiaries were not able to take advantage of this security and convenience because they are in fact unable to utilize their benefits online.

EBT and payments specialists, including former Instacart and Freshop personnel, work for Forage in-house. Along with its standalone EBT solution, Forage also created and just released the first Shopify app, which provides online EBT payment processing to Shopify’s community of businesses. To speed up its transition to accepting SNAP EBT online, the company is already collaborating with hundreds of reputable supermarkets.

“Forage is tackling a critical problem for consumers and merchants as more groceries are bought online,”

“Nyca is excited to back the incredible team on their mission of making it as easy for eligible merchants to accept EBT as any other form of payment.”

                                                                                  Tom Brown, Partner at Nyca Partners.

In order to increase the number of merchants accepting EBT online and, ultimately, the number of SNAP recipients, Forage offers businesses support through every stage of the USDA approval process, from compiling the necessary papers through system engineering and testing to implementation.