There are two parts to any EBT card. 
The first being 1) cash and the 2) food stamps now called SNAP. In the old days they use to come separately and a recipient would get a check for the cash portion and actual food stamps.
Deciding it was too expensive and cumbersome they into one card (EBT) that contains both parts. Some EBT cardholders may have both cash and Food Stamps or maybe just one of these benefits on their card.
For today lets just focus on the CASH side not SNAP. Cash can not be used for:
- Alcoholic beverages
- Court orders fees, fines, bails or bail bonds
- Firearms and ammunitions
- Gambling
- Jewelry
- Lottery Tickets
- Pornographic material or performances
- Tatoos or body piercing
- Tobacco products
- Vacation services
As a result businesses that sell these products are not allowed to accept the EBT card “cash” to buy these products. A cardholder, however, can access an ATM across the street, remove cash, walk back and buy any of these products since they have “cash”.
Currently many people are starting to be covered with 
Health Saving Account eligible high deductible health insurance plans. Insureds will then deposit monies tax-deductible and tax deferred into a Health Savings Account, but are able to access their monies without penalty to pay qualified expenses.
They typically access monies with an debit card that has codes that correspond to the qualified expense; for example, they can use the card to pay their bill at the dentist, but they can not use the card to buy lunch. The Commonwealth needs to put the same type of “qualifed expense list” on the EBT cash side and not allow a recipient to have access to “cash”.
