Electronic Benefits Transfer Services

The vendor is required to provide electronic benefits transfer (EBT) services for the special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children (WIC).
- General requirements
•    The EWIC system shall meet all applicable federal and state regulations, including WIC regulations 7 cfr part 246.
•    The EWIC system shall process transactions in compliance with:
o    7 cfr part 246 and FNS WIC memos, bulletins, and guidance
o    FNS operating rules for WIC EBT 
o    prevailing industry technical and performance standards
•    The EWIC service provider shall provide, at no cost to the state agency, any EWIC system software enhancements or upgrades developed on behalf of other WIC state agencies. 
•    The EWIC service provider shall notify the state agency of these enhancements. 
1. Coordination with the mi’s contractor
•    The EWIC service provider shall coordinate interface related design, development, testing, and implementation tasks as needed with the mi’s contractor.
•    The EWIC service provider shall schedule and conduct remote meetings with the maintenance and enhancements mis contractor. 
•    Include preparation of meeting agenda and provision of meeting summaries.
- Interfaces
•    The EWIC service provider shall establish secure, high-performance connectivity between the EWIC system and the mis to accommodate available and reliable message-based and file-based system interfaces.
•    The EWIC service provider is expected to state WIC-it mis-EBT interface specification. 
•    It is anticipated that there will be no changes made to the state WIC-it system to support the interface. 
•    The EWIC system shall provide an interface documented by the EWIC service provider in an interface control document and that is in the most current version that is in production and has been accepted for use in other states and is based upon the FNS WIC universal mis-EBT interface.
•    The provided interface may deviate from a published version of the FNS WIC universal mis-EBT interface provided that the deviation has been accepted by other states and approved by food and nutrition service (FNS), state, and the EWIC service provider.  
•    The EWIC service provider shall establish secure, high-performance connectivity between the EWIC production and fail over systems and the mis production system. 
•    The EWIC service provider shall establish secure, high-performance connectivity between the EWIC production and fail over system and the mis disaster recovery system.
•    The event of a difference in interpretation in the interface specification, the mis contractor will make the final determination with consultation with the state agency.
•    The EWIC system shall accept and transmit data to and from the mis in message-based interface or in batch system interface (batch files). 
•    The system shall be able to accept batch files 24 x 7 x 365, with the exception of scheduled down time.
•    The following message-based functions shall be supported:
o    Electronic benefit account (EBA)
o    Update EBA
o    Add or update benefits
o    Get benefit balance
o    Get benefit maintenance history
o    Get benefit redemption history
o    Add cardholder and card function
o    Add or update personal identification number (pin) function
o    Update card
o    Get cardholders and cards function
o    Get card history
•    The following batch file-based functions shall be supported:
o    Report card file updates
o    Add or update vendor
o    Add or update category and subcategory information
o    Add or update universal product code (UPC) and price look up (PLU) information
o    Report WIC benefit red emptions
o    Report WIC benefit changes
o    Report benefits purged
o    Request automated clearing house (ACH) payment (optional)
o    Report ACH payments (optional)
o    Batch file confirmation.

- Questions/Inquires Deadline: August 29, 2025