PENNSYLVANIA, USA — Millions of people are still waiting to get their stimulus payment from the federal government.
Some of those people are getting EIP or economic impact payment debit cards.
People have been emailing us asking if these visa debit cards are legitimate.
The answer is yes.
So if you haven’t received your stimulus payment, you need to check the mail.
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"We do a lot of consumer fraud information, alerting a lot of people about the red flags and things they should be concerned about, so our education is working because many people have been really concerned that it was a scam," said Mary Bach, the chair of AARP's consumer issues taskforce.
She has been getting a lot of questions about the EIP card or as a lot of people have been calling it, the stimulus debit card.
The prepaid card contains your money from the federal CARES act.
It comes in a plain envelope from Money Network Cardholder Services.
Inside, is a VISA card from Metabank.
If you haven't heard of that bank, you might think it's junk mail and just throw it out.
"People are not at all convinced that it actually is legitimate because it does look quite fake," said Bach.
For people who do throw it out, don't worry you can still get your money.
You'll have to call money network at 1-800-240-8100 to report it lost or stolen and it will cost you.
Bach said, "If you want to get the card replaced, there are fees that are associated with that depending on how quickly you want to receive it."
When you do eventually activate your card, you will have to hand over some personal information.
"When you call to activate the card with Visa, in fact, you do have to give your social security number and a lot of people are wary about that," said Bach.
The debit cards do have some restrictions and are a bit different than if you get the payment deposited in the bank account.
If you use an out of network ATM to withdraw the cash, you could end up paying some surcharge fees and by the way, you can only withdraw $1,000 dollars at a time.
You can find answers to a lot more questions here.
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