Prepaid debit cards and paper checks are hitting the mail, set to arrive within the coming weeks, while a new round of direct deposits are scheduled for an official payment date of Wednesday, March 24. If you don’t receive a direct deposit by this date, your relief will most likely arrive in the form of a debit card or paper check. The $1,400-per-person payments—one of the major provisions of the American Rescue Plan relief bill—are meant to help struggling households and jump-start the economy as it recovers from the pandemic. Most taxpayers don’t have to do anything in order to claim the payments, which should in most cases be delivered the same way as the first round of stimulus from 2020, and the second more recent payment from earlier in the year. Taxpayers can check on the status of their payments with the IRS’s Get My Payment tool. “The IRS continues to send the third round of stimulus payments in record time,” said IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig in a press release. “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.” Both paper checks and debit cards will arrive by mail in a white envelope with the U.S. Department of the Treasury label. For this reason, the government cautioned taxpayers to keep an eye on their mailbox and be on the lookout for scams, as legitimate recipients aren’t the only ones trying to get their hands on the payments.
