Treasury Taps Visa, Fiserv to Move Covid-19 Payments by Card (1)

The Treasury Department has reached a deal with Visa Inc., Meta Financial Group Inc.'s Metabank and Fiserv Inc. to send cards pre-loaded with Covid-19 stimulus payments to hard-to-reach individuals, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service have been searching for a faster and more secure alternative to paper checks to millions of individuals whose bank account information isn’t on record for direct deposit with the IRS.

The plan is to scale up an existing product offered by the companies for federal agency payments, known as the U.S. Debit Card.

It’s unclear how quickly ...