A Maryland household that still swipes the old magnetic-stripe EBT card at the register faces a hard stop on Wednesday. The state’s Department of Human Services says magnetic-stripe cards will stop working on September 30, 2026, and only an activated chip-and-tap card keeps food benefits usable after that.
What Maryland DHS says happens at the end of September
The department’s EBT updates page, last revised on September 28, repeats the same cutoff and mentions no extension or grace period. It says a cardholder should follow the activation instructions that came with the new card, or call 1-800-997-2222, and that a new PIN has to be created during activation.
Governor Wes Moore’s office announced the statewide rollout in a July 17 press release. It said every current EBT cardholder would receive a chip-enabled card in the mail automatically, over roughly three weeks, and that all legacy magnetic-stripe cards would be deactivated on September 30. The release also cited 1,049 activated cards in an earlier pilot. Nothing in either document asks a household to apply for the new card; the card was supposed to arrive on its own.
That leaves two groups with a problem this week. One is the household that has the new card in a drawer and has not activated it. The other is the household that never received it, perhaps because of an old address. The department’s page points both to the same phone line.
Where a grocery budget feels a dead card first
An EBT card that fails at the register is not an inconvenience that can be settled later in the week. SNAP benefits load onto the card each month, and the card is the only way to spend them at the register. A card that has been deactivated cannot be used at a checkout line, so a household planning a large shop around the last day of September, or the first days of October, would find the plan unusable until a working card is in hand.
Replacement carries its own small cost. On the same page, the department lists the first replacement card within 12 months as free and later replacements at $2.00. A household that misplaces the new chip card after activating it, or throws away the envelope with the old one, can spend a few days without access while a replacement travels through the mail.
Why the chip swap is happening at all
The change exists because of card skimming, where thieves copy the data from a magnetic stripe and drain the balance. The chip-and-tap design is meant to make that kind of copying harder. A federal safety net for that kind of theft has also ended. New Jersey’s Department of Human Services noted in a September 10 release that federal authorization and funding for replacing electronically stolen SNAP benefits ended in December 2024.
In practical terms, a household that loses benefits to a skimmer generally cannot count on the federal government to put the money back. Virginia’s chip card site is blunt on the same point: benefits lost to skimming, cloning or other fraudulent methods cannot be replaced. Maryland’s own page, as read for this article, does not spell out a replacement policy for stolen benefits either way, so a household that has been hit by skimming would need to ask the department directly.
Other states run the same swap on different clocks
Maryland’s fixed calendar date is not the only model. Other states are moving households on rolling schedules tied to when each card goes out. New Jersey says current cards expire 60 days after new cards are issued, and gives cardholders 90 days from receipt to activate. Virginia says an old card deactivates 60 days after the new one is mailed, even if the new one has not been activated, and expects every customer to have a chip card by December 31, 2026. Massachusetts described itself in a July 29 announcement as the fourth state to roll out chip-and-tap EBT cards statewide, with cards mailed to the rest of the state through August.
Those details matter to Maryland readers mainly as a reminder that no two states share a rule. A relative in Virginia or New Jersey may be working on a different timetable, and the Maryland date should not be assumed to apply across the border.
What a household can settle before the register does
The steps the department describes are short: find the new card, follow the activation instructions printed with it, choose a new PIN, and call 1-800-997-2222 if the card has not come or the activation does not work. Households that share a card with a caregiver, or that keep benefits for an older relative, have one more task, because the person who uses the card at the store needs to know the new PIN.
The wider lesson for anyone on SNAP is that the card is only one piece of paperwork attached to the benefit. Recertification dates, address changes and reporting rules all run on separate calendars, and a missed mailing can affect more than a card. The Maryland Department of Human Services page remains the controlling source for the September 30 date, and its update of September 28 is the latest word on record.
Keeping the SNAP calendar in one place after a card swap
A new EBT card is one of several mailings a Maryland SNAP household has to track, alongside recertification notices and address updates. The card cutoff is fixed, while the other dates vary by case and by state.
The SNAP & Medicaid Renewal Organizer includes a renewal document checklist and a renewal and reporting calendar, plus 51 state packs, that set out those dates in one place.
Get the renewal and reporting calendar in The SNAP & Medicaid Renewal Organizer →
This article was prepared with AI assistance and checked against the cited Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts sources.
