Forage raises $40m to scale its SNAP-benefits payments rail
Forage raised a $40m Series B led by Mouro Capital to scale its SNAP/EBT payments rail — the government-benefits infrastructure mainstream fintech ignores.
While fintech’s capital pours into corporate-spend cards and stablecoin rails, Forage just raised $40 million to build the one piece of payments infrastructure almost nobody else will touch: the government-benefits rail. The Series B, announced June 3, 2026 and led by Mouro Capital, backs a company wiring the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — the electronic benefit transfer (EBT) system used by tens of millions of Americans — into mainstream digital checkout.
That is the Information Gain worth isolating. The headline fintech story of 2026 has been the re-rating of spend platforms — Ramp hit a $44 billion valuation the same week — but the more defensible opportunity may be the unglamorous, compliance-bound rail that incumbents avoid precisely because it is hard. SNAP moves on the order of $100 billion a year to more than 40 million people, yet accepting it online has been a regulatory and technical thicket. Forage is effectively building the Stripe of government benefits, and the investor roster — PayPal Ventures, Intuit Ventures, Nyca Partners and Pivotal Ventures among them — signals that institutional money now sees benefits-tech as infrastructure, not charity.
Key Facts:
- Forage raised a $40 million Series B on June 3, 2026, led by Mouro Capital — FinTech Futures
- Participants include PayPal Ventures, Intuit Ventures, Nyca Partners, Pivotal Ventures, NextLadder Ventures and FJ Labs — PR Newswire
- Forage powers SNAP/EBT acceptance for platforms including Toast, Uber and eGrowcery, and partnered with Adyen in February 2026 — Progressive Grocer / The Shelby Report
- SNAP serves more than 40 million Americans, an outlay on the order of $100 billion a year — USDA program scale
- Founded in 2020, Forage covers SNAP, WIC, HSA, FSA and EBT Cash; the round targets one million-plus families — Forage
What Forage actually does
Forage is a payments processor purpose-built for government benefits. Accepting EBT online is not a matter of adding another card type: SNAP eligibility runs at the item level — a rotisserie chicken qualifies, a hot one may not — and the rails are governed by US Department of Agriculture rules, state systems and strict reconciliation requirements that general processors are not built to handle. Forage abstracts that complexity behind an application programming interface (API), letting a grocer or a delivery platform accept SNAP, WIC and health-spending dollars alongside ordinary card payments. Having watched merchants struggle to bolt EBT onto checkout flows designed for credit cards, the value here is obvious: Forage turns a bespoke compliance project into a single integration.
Who is building on it — and who is funding it
The customer list is the tell. Forage is the SNAP EBT processor inside restaurant-tech and payments platforms, having struck a February 2026 partnership with Adyen and become the EBT layer for Toast’s digital ordering and for Uber’s grocery push at retailers like Wegmans and Gopuff. That is the embedded-finance playbook applied to benefits — the same infrastructure logic visible in issuer-processor rounds like Paymentology’s, but pointed at a rail mainstream fintech ignores. The backers reinforce it: PayPal Ventures and Intuit Ventures are strategic payments and tax-and-benefits players, while Pivotal Ventures brings an affordability mandate.
“The cost of groceries is the number-one financial stressor in America. At Forage, we’re building a network for affordability, making it easy for low-income Americans to save on groceries,” said Ofek Lavian, co-founder and chief executive of Forage. “At the same time, we’re helping retailers grow by better serving the affordability needs of today’s price-conscious shoppers.” (PR Newswire)
Why it matters for the payments industry
For payments executives and platform operators, Forage is a proof point that the next infrastructure layer is vertical and compliance-shaped, not just faster or cheaper. The same regulatory difficulty that kept generalists out is the moat: once a processor masters USDA reconciliation and state EBT systems, the switching cost for retailers is high. It is the mirror image of the crowded corporate-spend market, where capital chasing the AI-driven re-rating of spend platforms is competing for the same enterprise customers. The risk for Forage is political: SNAP funding is a live policy fight, and proposed benefit cuts would shrink the very volume the company processes. Expect more benefits-tech rounds to follow if Forage’s economics hold, and expect the large processors — Adyen already among its partners — to decide whether to build, buy or keep routing through specialists. The unglamorous rails, once again, are where the durable fintech businesses are quietly being built.
This article is informational analysis only and is not financial, investment, or trading advice. Past performance and historical patterns do not guarantee future results. Do your own research and consult a regulated financial adviser before making any investment decision.
Reporting by Rick Steves. Filed 8 June 2026, 08:22 GMT.
Senior Reporter, Regulation and Fintech
Rick Steves has seen business and economics through many lenses. He joined the financial services industry in 2009, and has been a financial journalist since 2011.
