Other retailers were effected by this outage, but did not react the way that Walmart did.
I was in a Food4Less in California during this timeframe (approximately 6 pm Pacific time). The cash registers had hand lettered signs posted “EBT System Down” and did not accept EBT transactions during that time.
Walmart could have chosen to not accept EBT transactions during the outage, but someone in Walmart management decided to go ahead and process the EBT cards anyway.
This is what happened with a particular demographic when Walmart tried refusing the cards:
Walmart decided to write off their grocery section rather than have a riot and looting even that might injure their workers, other shoppers, damage the store and equipment and end up with lots of OTHER items (TV’s, electronics, housewares, etc) leaving as well.
BTW the pic at that link is a stock Walmart photo, not one from the store in the article itself.
I live about 120 miles from that store. Friends of ours were at our local super walmart Saturday morning. Upon hearing her card was invalid one welfare recipient exclaimed ‘imma burn down dis store!’. There was a general clamor, agreement and uproar among her fellow demographic and our friends got out of there as quickly as they could.