Forage Just Raised $40 Million to Make Grocery Benefits Work Better for Low-Income Families
TECHNOLOGY
Forage's new consumer app helps low-income families securely check their EBT balances and get rewarded for everyday purchases.
Grocery prices are the number-one financial stressor in America right now, ahead of housing, healthcare, and childcare. For the roughly 40 million Americans who rely on SNAP to meet their nutritional needs, that stress is compounded by infrastructure that was never built for the digital age. Forage is changing that, and it just raised $40 million to accelerate the work.
The San Francisco-based financial infrastructure platform announced its Series B funding round, led by Mouro Capital with participation from Nyca Partners, PayPal Ventures, Long Journey Ventures, Intuit Ventures, NextLadder Ventures, Pivotal Ventures, and FJ Labs. The funding will be used to scale Forage's new consumer app and expand the company's payments infrastructure, two sides of the same mission to make affordability more accessible for low-income families across the country.
The Infrastructure Problem Nobody Talks About
Nearly one in eight Americans depends on SNAP, yet the system powering those benefits was built for a different era. Millions of SNAP families can't check their balances in real time, can't shop at many online retailers, and don't have access to the same digital conveniences available to everyone else. The gap isn't a policy failure, it's an infrastructure failure. And it's the problem Forage was built to solve.
Forage's payments technology is already in use at over 100,000 stores across all 50 states, including national retailers like Dollar General, Gopuff, and Save A Lot, as well as online platforms like DoorDash and Uber Eats. The company has facilitated tens of millions of grocery orders for millions of American families and grown payments volume by 13x over the last year. As the only USDA-approved third-party payment processor combining modern software with dedicated retailer support, Forage has built something that didn't exist before: genuinely modern SNAP infrastructure at scale.
A Free App Built for Real Families
Alongside the funding announcement, Forage has launched a consumer app designed to directly address the daily friction low-income families face. The app is free and built around practical needs: securely checking EBT balances in real time, discovering savings and earning rewards on everyday purchases, finding nearby stores and online retailers that accept SNAP, learning which items are SNAP-eligible by state, and accessing tools to support financial health more broadly.
Since launching in late 2025, the app has been downloaded over 100,000 times, and the user response has been striking. One Google Play reviewer captured the sentiment simply: "I truly cannot say enough good things about this app." By the end of 2026, Forage aims to reach one million low-income families through the platform.
Why Investors Are Paying Attention
Christopher Gottschalk, General Partner at Mouro Capital, framed the opportunity clearly: "SNAP is one of the largest and most underserved payment ecosystems in the country. Forage has built the only modern infrastructure to serve it at scale." The confidence of investors including PayPal Ventures and Pivotal Ventures, Melinda French Gates' investment firm, reflects growing recognition that financial infrastructure for low-income Americans is both a meaningful social need and a significant market opportunity.
For Forage CEO Ofek Lavian, the vision is straightforward: "We're building a network for affordability, making it easy for low-income Americans to save on groceries." With $40 million in new funding and momentum on both the retailer and consumer sides, that network is growing fast. Learn more at joinforage.com.
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