$1,400 Richer: Today Is Stimulus Payday for Millions of Americans

Ethen Kim Lieser

Stimulus Payment,

But what happens if you did not get your cash? Here is what to do next. 

The Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Treasury earlier this week announced that a hundred million more stimulus checks—totaling more than $420 billion—were being processed and sent off to financially struggling taxpayers via direct deposit and traditional mail.

For potentially tens of millions of Americans, that payday is today.

If you’re still waiting to get your hands on the third stimulus check under the American Rescue Plan, make sure to log into your bank account to see if the funds have indeed arrived. If you can see that it is a pending transaction in your account, know that it should settle in a day or two.

Also, keep in mind that for this particular batch of Economic Impact Payments, what’s noticeably different is that it includes a large number of paper checks and prepaid debit cards.

“The IRS continues to send the third round of stimulus payments in record time,” IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said in a statement. “Since this new set of payments will include more mailed payments, we urge people to carefully watch their mail for a check or debit card in the coming weeks.”  

To help prepare Americans waiting for that physical check, the IRS has released new images of what they should be on the lookout for in the mail this time—and it will prominently show the seal of the U.S. Treasury on the envelope. Moreover, the paper checks will not bear President Joe Biden’s signature, though previous payments had former President Donald Trump’s name on it.

Meanwhile, some people should be on the lookout for a prepaid debit card. Know that debit cards that were used for previous payments will not be reloaded, so if you’re eligible, a new one will be issued. The debit cards will have the Visa name on the front and MetaBank N.A., which issues the cards, on the back.

The Treasury also has highlighted the fact that if a taxpayer received the last two stimulus checks via traditional mail, he or she could get the payment as a direct deposit this time around.

“The vast majority of taxpayers receiving EIPs will receive it by direct deposit. In addition, the IRS and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service leveraged data in their systems to convert many payments to direct deposits that otherwise would have been sent as paper checks or debit cards,” the agency said. “This accelerated the disbursement of these payments by weeks.”

If you’re still sitting empty-handed after today, know that you can always log on to the IRS “Get My Payment” tool at www.irs.gov/coronavirus/get-my-payment. To use it, you will just need to enter your full Social Security or tax ID number, date of birth, street address, and ZIP code. Be aware that you don’t have to waste your days by constantly checking on the site, as the IRS says that the tool “updates once per day, usually overnight.”  

You can also speak to a live human regarding your missing or late check by dialing 800-919-9835, but you should know that “IRS live phone assistance is extremely limited at this time,” according to the agency’s website.

That means that you should be prepared to sit on hold for at least several minutes if you’re lucky or even an hour or two. Some individuals have confirmed that they haven’t been able to get through to a live representative.

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Minneapolis-based Science and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.