Grocery store customers in several states including here in Alabama had to walk away empty handed Saturday after they were unable to use their EBT cards to make purchases.

National media outlets are reporting that a computer glitch resulted in customers who receive the government benefit not being able to use the debit-style cards.

EBT cards allow state welfare departments to issue benefits via a magnetically encoded payment strip.

Many people at the time feared that the problem was a result of the government shut down, but that was not the case.

According to Xerox company spokeswoman Jennifer Wasmer, the electronic benefits system experienced a temporary shutdown during a routine test of back-up systems.

The outage also affected people in Georgia and at least 15 other states.

According to a representative with the Piggly Wiggly store in Centre, the system came back on at around 8:30 or 9:00 Saturday night and they are once again able to process the EBT cards.