I received in the mail yesterday a Visa debit card that arrived in a plain white envelope from an address in Omaha called Metabank. (MetaBank, the retail banking division, operates 10 retail branches in four market areas: Central Iowa; Storm Lake, Iowa; Brookings, S.D..; and Sioux Falls, S.D.. MetaBank offers traditional banking services designed to serve the needs of individual, agricultural, and business depositors and borrowers.)
Most people toss their credit card offers, but I decided to open the thin white envelope and found inside my "Economic Impact Credit" in the form of a VISA debit card. Yes, this "small" bank is the one issuing the Federal payments as a VISA debit card. Not one of my two large banks on the east coast, but some unknown! The reason soon became clear.
Some of my friends have gotten their money as a direct deposit to their bank. The IRS has my bank routing information to one of the largest banks on the east coast, but they did not use that. Others have gotten their money as a check from the U.S. Treasury. Instead, I have gotten this Visa debit card in an unobtrusive envelope with absolutely no advertising from the Treasury office that some of us will be getting our money this way. I have read that some people have tossed this envelope thinking it was a solicitation for getting a credit card!
The U.S. government has made no effort to make this clear to people. I also learned that there are numerous fees attached to the use of the card. They (Metabank) allow you to make only one withdrawal per day from an ATM before they charge you $2.00 per transaction. Because my HUGE bank is "out-of-network" my bank is charging an additional $3.50 per withdrawal and will not allow me to withdraw a large enough amount to empty the card in one day! This is money that people who cannot put food on the table could use.
Start adding this all up and you can see the bank lobby is making millions of dollars off of this VISA debit scam. Not only in fees but in the money they are holding from people who threw away their card!
In addition, my card balance is not in even dollars but ends in 50 cents. You cannot get 50 cents from an ATM. I will have to spend it somewhere and overspend to get the 50 cents. I cannot imagine how someone who has never had such a card or does not read small print will get confused and end up owing Metabank money before they can figure out how to cancel. I will attempt to clear the balance tomorrow, and hopefully donate it all to a worthy cause(s)...although emotionally I would like to donate it to the Democratic party and buy a balloon with Trump in a diaper.
Greed is endless.