Many Kittitas County residents unexpectedly received their second round of stimulus payments in the form of a Visa bank card. Several, primarily senior citizens, found this to be a problematic method of distributing the money compared to a direct deposit. 

Becky Carollo, a Kittitas County resident, said she received a call from her elderly father after he got a debit card in the mail. 

Carollo’s father was very skeptical of the card and questioned whether or not it was a scam. After making a trip to her father’s house, she helped set up his four-digit pin in order to activate his card. 

Carollo said she’s concerned for other seniors receiving their stimulus in this form. 

“To me, it’s going to be a problem,” Carollo said. “You’re asking a population of people who don’t normally do transactions that way to now spend $600 [with] this plastic card that they are now going to have to remember a pin number.” 

In addition to the issues attached to using the card, some residents are upset because they weren’t expecting this type of payment, and many have overlooked it in the mail. The envelope is marked with a stamp that says: “Not a bill or advertisement. Important information about your Economic Impact Payment.”

However, according to some residents, the envelope looks like junk mail, and as a result, they ended up unknowingly throwing it away. 

Richard Hall received his second stimulus payment through a debit card as well. It wasn’t until he heard about the debit card and saw a picture of the envelope posted on a Kittitas County community chat that he realized the letter he threw in his shredding pile the week before contained his $600 stimulus. 

Hall shared his frustrations, saying, “with all the money that has been spent on advertising Covid, I think [this] method of stimulus payment deserved a little press as well.”