People enrolled in the government food assistance programuse plastic vouchers similar to debit cards. Starting at about11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT), some of those cards stopped working,Xerox spokesman Kevin Lightfoot said.
A power outage that started the problem was fixed within 20minutes, Lightfoot said, but shoppers continued to run intodifficulties throughout the day. By early evening, the problemstill had not been fixed.