Because of persistent problems, the state of Washington has terminated its test of a magnetic stripe payment card for authorizing purchases under its Women, Infants, and Children electronic benefits program.
James P. Hammond, the manager of WIC information services for the Washington State Department of Health, said in an interview that the test was shut down Nov. 17, about a month ahead of schedule. The state is planning to conduct a feasibility study in the near future to determine what kind of card system would work best for the program.
There were two main issues with the magnetic stripe cards, he said.
First, the program required checkout clerks to read prices from the merchant's systems and then key them into the WIC system; the process took time and sometimes resulted in errors, he said. "That would slow down the lane significantly every time it happened."
He also said that stores sometimes had problems connecting to the host computers operated by Stored Value Systems Inc., the Brentwood, Tenn., subsidiary of Comdata Corp. that processed the transactions. When merchants could not reach the computers, they had to reboot their WIC card readers - another procedure that would slow down checkout lanes.
Despite these issues, Mr. Hammond said the program had yielded several months of "good data" that will be evaluated by the Food and Nutrition Service, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which sponsored the test.
When the cards worked correctly, they completed transactions in less than 30 seconds, he said. He said the connectivity problems could be corrected, and if the state adopts the system, the readers would eventually be integrated into the merchants' point of sale systems, he said. Such an integration would make checkout lines move faster, "because the clerk no longer has to enter a price" into a separate reader.
Mr. Hammond said the goal of the test was to demonstrate whether the technology worked. He said he liked the system, because it kept track of purchases in real time. "There's no delay for the client, and the benefits are posted" to the system immediately.
Michigan has also been testing magnetic stripe cards for its state WIC program.
Every state but Wyoming is using magnetic stripe cards for their food stamp programs. (Wyoming uses smart cards but is considering switching to stripe cards.)
But food stamps have far fewer restrictions than WIC programs. For example, WIC programs must keep track of what products people buy, how much they buy, and even which brands they choose.
The FNS initially advocated using smart cards for WIC programs, because the chips can store all the data needed to authorize purchases. However, the cost of installing smart card readers at merchants prompted the FNS to consider alternatives, such as magnetic stripe cards.
Some industry watchers had questioned whether a magnetic stripe card would be able to handle the complex transactions, and the Washington test may not resolve the issue.
Robert A. Bucceri, a consultant with Chaddsford Planning Associates LLC of West Chester, Pa., and a senior consultant with the Electronic Funds Transfer Association, said that the test's results had not been independently verified.
"One would think you should have an independent party observing this all the way," Mr. Bucceri said. "I don't know if you can say if it worked or didn't work, because you don't have scientific proof."
Mr. Bucceri said that he saw a demonstration of the Washington system in a laboratory setting, and though the system worked well in those conditions, the test's problems in the field will probably bolster opponents of magnetic stripe WIC cards.
Marcus Brownrigg, a spokesman for the FNS, said in an e-mail that it is waiting for a report from Washington on the test "before determining the next steps that will be taken."
Executives for Stored Value Systems did not respond to phone calls last week.
Texas has been testing a WIC smart card program, and according to Hank Lundberg, the WIC EBT development manager for the Texas Department of State Health Services, there have been no problems.
The test began in June 2004 in El Paso County and was expanded last month to Grayson County, north of Dallas. By the end of next year the program is expected to be running in about half the state's counties.
Michigan is conducting a WIC test that uses both magnetic stripe cards and an offline system similar to a smart card. Participants swipe a card when they enter a store, and their available benefits are downloaded to the store's database; the participants swipe the card again at the register to authorize purchases, which are later uploaded to the state's computer.
