eppicard
EPPICards are a popular tool in most States for paying such things as unemployment insurance and other social welfare checks. They function much like a debit card, each one attached to an individual person, and to an account with a certain amount of money in it. When the State pays the unemployment insurance, it is placed directly in the account and the amount of money available via the EPPICard increases.
There are currently 19 U.S. states that use Eppicard to process and distribute state payments. Recently, Eppicard users have been the target of phishing scams. Are Eppicards an effective way for states to distribute benefits?
Bamboozled was contacted by two more EPPICard users who reported trouble with Affiliated Computer Services, or ACS, the company that manages the EPPICard benefit card for New Jersey and 15 other states.
Rosemarie Harris of Brooklyn, N.Y., found her EPPICard balance wiped out in August.
As safety goes, the EPPICard itself is not inherently deficient. Both from a technology and security standpoint, it is in line with the industry standards for credit and debit cards, and has no obvious flaws for scammers to exploit. In fact, the EPPICard is usually a generic debit card, such as a Visa, and its only distinguishing feature is that it is not linked to a normal bank account, but to an EPPI account
