No EPPI Card Fees!

Welcome to noeppicard.com!

Do you receive child support, unemployment or any other kind of government benefit payment through the EPPI card or another prepaid debit card? If you do, you may be subject to predatory terms and conditions such as these . If you have an option to get direct deposit, you should take it.

"In Missouri, for instance, 94,883 people claimed unemployment benefits through debit cards from Central Bank. Analysts say a recipient uses a card an average of six to 10 times a month. If each cardholder makes three withdrawals at an out-of-network ATM, at a fee of $1.75, the bank would collect nearly $500,000. If half of the cardholders also dial customer service three times in any given week (the first time is free; after that, it's 25 cents a call), the bank's revenue would jump to more than $521,000. That would yield $6.3 million a year." (see the Research page for more information about the fees associated with benefit cards)

According to a letter that was sent to me by the State of NJ in 2009 when I wrote (through a lawyer) to complain about the fees, there were over 200,000 EPPI card users in NJ. NJ only issues cards for child support, so that figure did not include any unemployment, medicare, or other benefit users. According to the math above that means Comerica Bank (who holds the NJ contract) has been reaping at least a cool million a month in NJ alone since 2009, taken from payments designated for children.

As of 2012 that means NJ children have lost somewhere in the neighborhood of $36,000,000 to the banks. That's 36 MILLION dollars. While I realize that's a low end bonus for a bank executive, I also believe that it could have made a difference to the families who didn't get it.

The target audience for the Eppicard (and its fees) is clearly shown to be young women and children by this demographic analysis of eppicard.com traffic. Check out the 'Audience' tab halfway down the page.

The justification for privatizing distribution of government payments is that it will save the government money on administration and postage. Instead, that cost is being transferred to young families and the revenue goes to the banks, while the US Post Office withers away. It might make some kind of sense if the government got the fees, but instead the government actually seems to pay our tax dollars to the banks to administer the Eppicard.

I hope the information on this website will compel you to sign our petition to the United States government asking for fair terms on government benefit cards.