Gov. Kathy Hochul will include a plan in her executive budget to modernize the electronic debit cards people use for food assistance to reduce theft and fraud in the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The governor this week tucked a proposal in her State of the State agenda to update Electronic Benefits Transfer debit cards with microchip technology to protect low-income families who qualify for food stamps from theft. 

Tens of thousands of cases of fraud are reported in the state each quarter.

“For years, the SNAP card has been very vulnerable to skimming, where people who use SNAP to eat go to the grocery store, swipe their card and the money’s gone,” Assemblywoman Jessica González-Rojas told Spectrum News 1. “It’s been a big problem.”

Lawmakers have proposed legislation in recent years to address the uptick of skimming fraud — especially in the city — that often happens without the victim’s knowledge.

About 3 million New Yorkers receive food assistance each month, with just over a million upstate.

Gonzalez-Rojas said chip-enabled cards will better protect low-income New Yorkers who rely on food assistance, and make the public benefits up to 87% more secure.

“We’re protecting those families that are food insecure in the moment where grocery prices are rising and everything’s unaffordable,” the Queens Assemblywoman said. “It’s so critical that we do this simple act.”

Most food retailers in the state back the idea, especially after recent federal changes to SNAP. A handful of states, including Oklahoma and California, have already chipped EBT cards to address skimming.

Mike Durant, president and CEO of the Food Industry Alliance of New York, said not all retailers use the same system and accept different cards, and business costs must be kept down to avoid shifting the burden to consumers.

“Point of sale systems are a big thing,” Durant said Thursday. “How can we make this seamless? How do we work to get this moving? And then there’s a cost element to that too on the retailer. So how can we maybe alleviate depending upon what the cost of that upgrade is?”

Hochul and lawmakers are focused on affordability reforms that aren’t controversial in this high-stakes election year.

Durant says he’s waiting for more details in the governor’s budget to be released Tuesday afternoon, adding SNAP recipients drive business for food retailers.

“We support the endeavor, but we think it’s going to take a lot more collaboration than just a blanket legislative proposal that we agree on in April or May or whenever the budget’s done,” he said.

More than 61,000 New Yorkers filed claims for EBT fraud with an estimated $17 million in benefits reported stolen in the state from October 2023 through spring 2024.