WIC Electronic Benefit Transfer EBT Transaction Processing Services

The State of Delaware Department of Health and Social Services, Division of Public Health is requesting proposals for WIC Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) transaction processing services (RFP HSS-27-008), with proposals due February 9, 2027 and questions due November 10, 2026. The solicitation requires all work be performed in the United States with no offshore facilities permitted.

The vendor must manage approximately 24,000 WIC participants and approximately 75 authorized food vendors across Delaware's three counties, providing real-time transaction authorization, benefit delivery, account management, EBT card and PIN issuance, POS system deployment and maintenance for exempt vendors, settlement and reconciliation, and comprehensive reporting and customer support. The system must interface with WIC-on-the-WEB (WOW), jointly operated with Maryland and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and conform to the latest USDA-FNS WIC EBT Technical Implementation Guide, WIC EBT Operating Rules, WIC Universal MIS-EBT Interface Specifications, and ANSI X9.93 data security standards. The contractor must deliver 99.9% uptime availability and process real-time transactions with no more than two inaccurate transactions per 10,000 processed. User Acceptance Testing must complete within eight months of contract execution and full state cutover within 12 months. All transition efforts are at no cost to the State, and the contractor assumes liability for system errors, unauthorized transactions, and benefit account discrepancies.

The contract term is five years with two optional two-year extensions. Pricing must remain fixed and binding through November 30, 2032. The State reserves the right to award the contract to the vendor whose proposal is most advantageous rather than the lowest bidder and to award multiple contracts. Vendors must carry commercial general liability insurance of $1 million per occurrence and $3 million per aggregate, along with professional liability or errors and omissions coverage of $1 million per occurrence and $3 million per aggregate.

Evaluation criteria are vendor qualifications (25 points), methodology (15 points), scope of work responses (30 points), ability to recruit and train qualified applicants (15 points), and proposed costs (15 points). Award notification is anticipated March 9, 2027 with a project start date of December 1, 2027. All questions must be submitted through the Euna Procurement (formerly Bonfire) Portal; no pre-bid meeting is scheduled.