On June 4, Forage announced a $40 million Series B — the largest round Forage has raised to date. The pitch is simple: roughly 38 million Americans still receive SNAP benefits, and most of them get nothing for their grocery spending. No points. No cash back. No rewards at all. Forage wants to change that.

But Propel (the app formerly called Fresh EBT) already has 5 million users doing something arguably more urgent: locking their cards against skimming. Criminals stole more than $600 million in SNAP benefits in 2025 alone, affecting roughly one in five SNAP households nationwide. The lock feature is free. Most people still don’t know it exists.

SNAP cuts have dominated the news for months. Coverage of which apps actually help the roughly 38 million people still on benefits? Almost none. Here’s what’s worth knowing.

At a Glance

App	Best For	Cost	Card Lock	Cash Back
Propel	Balance tracking, skimming protection	Free	Yes	No
Forage	Cash back on grocery receipts	Free	No	Up to 5%
State EBT app/hotline	Basic balance check	Free	Varies by state	No
Benny	(Shut down April 15, 2026)	—	—	—

Propel: The App 5 Million People Already Trust

Propel is the default answer for most EBT users, and for practical reasons. Five million people across 53 states and territories use it. Completely free. No subscription tier, no upsell.

What it actually does:

Balance checking across SNAP, EBT Cash, and WIC accounts — one app, all benefits in one place. Available in 49 states, DC, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Guam. Your state EBT hotline gives you the same balance information, but it’s slow and requires sitting on hold. Propel does it in seconds.

Card lock. This is the feature that matters most in 2026. You can freeze your EBT card directly from the app, blocking any transaction from going through. Benefits stay on the card. New deposits still land. Nothing goes out until you unlock it.

The lock feature is available in most states as of early 2026, per Propel’s security research. It won’t stop every form of theft — if your PIN is already compromised, you need to change that too — but it stops card-present skimmed transactions cold.

Benefits navigation and job listings. Propel has expanded beyond just EBT to include local job postings and help connecting to other assistance programs. Useful if you’re trying to meet a SNAP work requirement. The SNAP cut and budget gap guide covers the full picture on what’s changed with benefits access this year — Propel helps with navigating those changes.

Security practices: Propel uses bank-level encryption and explicitly doesn’t store PINs, complete EBT card numbers, or Social Security numbers on its servers. No bank account linking required. For households cautious about third-party access to financial accounts, that matters.

The honest limitation: Propel doesn’t earn you anything. It’s a management and protection tool, not a rewards tool. If you want cash back on grocery purchases, that’s Forage’s job.

Best for: Anyone currently receiving SNAP or EBT Cash benefits. The card lock alone makes it worth installing before you need it.

Forage: Cash Back Finally Comes to EBT Cards

Forage is the newer option, and the $40 million it just raised tells you investors see a real market here. The app launched in late 2025 and crossed 100,000 downloads since then — small compared to Propel, but growing fast.

The core product: you earn cash back on EBT grocery purchases. Up to 5% on receipt uploads at participating stores. Rewards pay out as prepaid Visa cards, not as EBT credit. (Federal rules prevent third parties from adding money directly to SNAP accounts, so the workaround is an external reward card.)

No SSN required. No bank account linking. The flow is: shop with your EBT card, upload your receipt, earn a percentage back as a prepaid Visa.

Forage also recently added what it calls “Receiptless” rewards — at qualifying retailers and platforms including DoorDash, Uber, Family Dollar, Dollar General, ALDI, and 7-Eleven, cash back tracks automatically without a manual upload. That partner list is going to expand as the company deploys the $40 million toward new retail deals.

The funding came with notable backers: Mouro Capital led, with PayPal Ventures, Intuit Ventures, Nyca Partners, and Pivotal Ventures (the venture arm of Melinda French Gates’s organization) all participating. The investor profile suggests a longer-term mission bet, not a quick exit play.

On the rates: The 5% ceiling is real but comes from specific product promotions, not blanket store coverage. Think manufacturer deals — a particular cereal or canned good — rather than a flat grocery rate. What’s available varies week to week. Check the app before your trip to see current offers.

What you get paid: Prepaid Visa cards, spendable anywhere Visa is accepted. Not a bank transfer, not PayPal. A card loaded with the earned amount. For unbanked households, that distinction matters: no bank account required to receive the reward.

Where it falls short: Forage’s retailer coverage is still growing. If you primarily shop somewhere that isn’t yet a Forage partner, the available cash back will be thinner and dependent on the receipt upload workflow. The best grocery budget apps guide covers the full stack of savings tools worth combining with Forage to close the gap on grocery costs.

Best for: SNAP recipients who want to earn something back on grocery spending, especially those who regularly shop at Dollar General, Family Dollar, ALDI, or 7-Eleven where the automatic tracking works without a receipt upload.

EBT Skimming: The Problem Neither App Talks About Enough

Both apps exist partly in response to a theft crisis that barely registers in mainstream financial coverage.

According to Propel’s published data, criminals stole more than $600 million in SNAP benefits in 2025, affecting roughly one in five SNAP households. These aren’t hackers breaching a database. They’re attaching physical skimming devices to grocery store card terminals, capturing EBT card numbers and PINs, cloning the cards, and draining benefits — often out of state, often within hours of the monthly deposit.

EBT cards still lack chip-and-PIN protection in most states. The magnetic stripe is the vulnerability, and Congress and USDA have moved slowly on mandating the upgrade. California is the outlier that shows what’s possible: the state implemented chip-enabled EBT cards and reported cutting overall EBT theft by 83% in early 2026. Most states haven’t made that move yet.

The practical protection available right now:

1. Lock your card between shopping trips. Propel’s card lock is the most direct defense currently available. Unlock before you shop, relock when you’re done. Takes ten seconds each way.
2. Check your balance frequently. Skimmers hit hardest right after monthly deposits. If you see an unexpected drop before making any purchases, report it to your state EBT agency immediately.
3. Change your PIN regularly. A captured PIN is useless if you rotate it. Your state EBT website lets you change it without visiting an office.
4. Inspect the card reader before swiping. Skimming overlays often sit slightly loose or look slightly off from the surrounding terminal. Jiggling the card slot takes five seconds.

The Zelle and P2P scam protection guide covers social engineering tactics that often work alongside physical skimming — worth reading if you’ve been getting unsolicited messages about your benefits.

What Happened to Benny?

The original brief for this post listed Benny as a Forage competitor. It was — past tense. Benny shut down on April 15, 2026. Forage moved quickly, publishing a migration guide for former Benny users and positioning itself as the direct replacement.

If you were a Benny user looking for where to go next: Forage is the functional equivalent and is actively backed and growing. If you’ve never used either, the shutdown just simplifies the choice — Forage is the cash back option, Propel is the management option.

What Is the Best App for Managing EBT and SNAP Benefits in 2026?

Propel is the best free app for managing EBT benefits. The complete picture:

1. Propel — Best overall for balance tracking, card lock, and managing multiple benefits (SNAP, EBT Cash, WIC) in one place. Free, 53 states and territories covered. Card lock is the most immediate protection against the skimming epidemic.
2. Forage — Best for earning cash back on EBT grocery spending. Free, up to 5% back on receipt uploads, automatic tracking at major partner retailers. Rewards pay as prepaid Visa cards with no bank account required.
3. Your state EBT app or hotline — Adequate for a quick balance check, but typically no lock feature, no rewards, and limited additional functionality.

Use Propel and Forage together. No conflict between them — Propel manages and protects, Forage earns. They cover different jobs.

Who Each App Is For

Propel makes sense for everyone still on SNAP. The card lock feature takes 30 seconds to enable and can prevent a month’s worth of benefits from disappearing overnight. Even if you never use any other Propel feature, that’s worth the install. The WIC and multi-benefit tracking is particularly valuable for families navigating multiple programs simultaneously.

Forage makes the most sense for recipients who shop at their partner retailers. Dollar General, Family Dollar, and ALDI are exactly the stores where a lot of SNAP recipients do most of their grocery shopping — affordable, widely distributed, and already integrated into Forage’s receiptless system. If those stores are part of your regular rotation, the cash back is low-friction. If you primarily shop somewhere else, receipt uploads are still available, but you’re dependent on whatever offers are active that week.

Forage’s goal of reaching one million families by end of 2026 — per their Series B announcement — is plausible if the DoorDash and Uber integrations drive adoption among recipients using online grocery ordering. Online EBT purchasing has expanded significantly since the pandemic and those channels are exactly where receiptless rewards can scale.

The Bottom Line

Forage’s $40 million is real money going toward a genuinely underserved need. Cash back on EBT purchases has essentially never existed before at this scale. The retailer partners and investor roster suggest they’re building toward something durable rather than burning cash on user acquisition.

But Propel is the more immediately essential app for most of the roughly 38 million people still on SNAP. It’s been doing the basic work — balance tracking, multi-state coverage, and card locking — longer, and 5 million users is not a small user base. The skimming problem is massive, underreported, and actively getting worse as chip card adoption lags. Card lock is the most direct countermeasure available, and Propel offers it for free.

Install both. Use Propel for daily balance monitoring and card protection. Use Forage when shopping at a partner retailer and you want something back on what you spend.

The broader SNAP policy situation — with millions having lost benefits under OBBB’s new work requirements — is a separate problem these apps can’t fix. But for the roughly 38 million still on benefits, knowing your balance, protecting your card, and recovering a few percent on groceries is practical, free, and worth doing today.

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Forage funding details from the official PR Newswire release. Skimming statistics from Propel’s 2026 EBT theft survey and the California Governor’s Office. App features verified June 2026 — confirm current availability for your state before relying on specific features like card lock.