A SNAP recipient checks her balance left after purchasing food supplies with a California EBT card in Los Angeles on Oct. 31, 2025. Damian Dovarganes/AP hide caption

Damian Dovarganes/AP

In a major step to combat a form of fraud that has robbed food stamp recipients of millions of dollars , the Trump administration is proposing a requirement for states to bolster the security features on their food assistance cards.

In recent years, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, has been the repeated target of card skimming, when thieves extract personal information from payment terminals and drain money from accounts. Most SNAP cards rely on a magnetic stripe for swipe payment – which tends to be vulnerable to skimming because it does a poor job of securing the data stored on cards.

Many banks in the U.S. took action against this issue over a decade ago by upgrading their cards to include microchips and tap-to-pay, which are considered more secure.…