Second stimulus check: IRS urges people to watch mail for prepaid card, check

Updated: Jan 9, 2021 / 09:52 AM CST

FILE – In this April 23, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump’s name is seen on a stimulus check issued by the IRS to help combat the adverse economic effects of the COVID-19 outbreak, in San Antonio. There were just a few hundred coronavirus cases when Congress first started focusing on emergency spending in early March. By the end of that month, as Congress passed the massive $2.2 trillion Cares Act, cases skyrocketed above 100,000 and deaths climbed past 2,000. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

(NewsNation Now) — Millions of Americans will be receiving their $600 stimulus check in the mail this month, and the Internal Revenue Service urged people to keep a careful eye on their mailboxes for a plain, white envelope holding their COVID-19 relief payment.

For those who don’t receive a direct deposit, they should watch their mail for either a paper check or a prepaid debit card, the IRS says.

“To speed delivery of the payments to reach as many people as soon as possible the Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Service is sending payments out by prepaid debit card,” according to the IRS.

The IRS warned that people who received the first stimulus payment as part of the CARES Act in the form of a check may not get their second payment in the same form and vice versa.

Physical payments will arrive in plain white envelopes with a U.S. Department of the Treasury seal.

A sample envelope and Economic Impact Payment debit card shown on the Internal Revenue website.

The rollout of the long-awaited second round of stimulus checks has been plagued by delays and routing errors so far and the government is now working to get the payments into the right hands.

“These EIP Cards follow the millions of payments already made by direct deposit and the ongoing mailing of paper checks that are delivering the second round of Economic Impact Payments as rapidly as possible,” the IRS said.

The IRS will distribute payments until Friday, Jan. 15. For more information on the debit card rollout or to track a payment, visit the IRS website.

Nexstar Media Wire contributed to this report.