Tennessee EBT Outage
Tennessee will experience an EBT Outage on Sunday, February 19, 2012, when the Department of Human Services converts all SNAP and Families First recipient accounts to a new EBT Contractor.

* The outage is scheduled to begin at 11:30 PM CT on Saturday, February 18, 2012, and end at 12:00 PM CT (Noon) on Sunday, February 19, 2012.

* During the outage the EBT Host System will be down; Point-of-Sale (POS) transactions cannot be processed during the outage period.

* JP Morgan Chase, the current Tennessee EBT Contractor will shut down the Host System at 11:30 PM CT on February 18, 2012, to begin the transfer of all TN EBT recipient account, benefit, and transaction files to the new Tennessee EBT Contractor FIS/eFunds.

* Once FIS/eFunds has received and processed the files; and validated account balances, the EBT Host System will be brought back on-line. This is scheduled to be completed by Noon on Sunday, February 19, 2012. The processing of EBT POS transactions will resume at that time.

* During the outage period, the EBT Retailer Assistance Line will be available to authorize the processing of SNAP EBT Manual Vouchers. Manual Voucher transactions are limited to a maximum of $40.00 during the outage. The Vouchers can only be used for SNAP transactions; there is no voucher process for EBT cash transactions.

* Current Retailers who only process SNAP transactions have already been contacted by FIS/eFunds concerning the change in EBT Contractors. Any SNAP only Retailers who failed to complete and submit the new POS contract with FIS/eFunds, will not be able to process EBT SNAP transactions following the outage.

* Retailers with third party processor (TPP) agreements did not need to take any special action. TPP EBT transaction routing changes are a part of the conversion process. These changes will be in place when outage ends