Almost 4 million people will soon be receiving their stimulus checks via a prepaid card issue by MetaBank; the program will allow for people to receive payment significantly faster than if they were to wait on paper checks that could end up taking months; the cards do come with some fees like $2 charge for out of network ATM withdrawals and a $5 fee for cash withdrawals from banks; “I think most people will find a card more useful than a check,” said Lauren Saunders, Associate Director of the National Consumer Law Center, to American Banker. “I think it’ll be an interesting experiment.”; there has recently been some experiments done where government benefits were distributed through a prepaid card but a large amount of fraud occurred; recipients will be forced to call a phone number to activate the card which should limit cases of fraud; “It looks like they’ve got good safeguards in place to make sure that the person who receives the card is the rightful recipient and can be authenticated,” said Madeline Aufseeser, a payments industry consultant, to American Banker. American Banker
