The IRS is simply not in a position to quickly deliver the millions of checks for stimulus payments.

Outdated technology, budget cuts, and the sudden enormity of the task to pay out stimulus checks to millions of Americans may have swamped the IRS. However, the Treasury is lending a hand. It has approved MetaBank (NASDAQ: CASH) and Fiserv (NASDAQ: FISV) for the issue of Visa (NYSE: V) prepaid cards pre-loaded with stimulus payments. (Reuters)

Reuters could not elicit any comments from Fiserv, MetaBank, or Visa on the matter.

Stimulus checks could be late

Stimulus checks could be delayed for millions of Americans for a whole host of reasons. These include outdated technology at an under-funded and overworked IRS and tax issues that vary from person to person. These include non-filing of returns, insufficiency of income, no-refund returns for the last few years, paper returns, and the use of a tax preparation service.

Even adding President Trump’s name to some checks could delay the printing process!

Another complication – the millions of Americans who, in this day and age, do not have a bank account.

However, according to Reuters, the issue of prepaid cards could accelerate the disbursement of stimulus funds to unbanked citizens, and also to those whose banking data is not available with the IRS.

Current status

The administration has started the distribution process this month to those who received a refund on their 2018 or 2019 tax returns and provided the IRS with their direct deposit details.

So far, the IRS has paid out $160 billion on 89.5 million checks.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of Congress members has demanded that the Treasury use blockchain and other distributed ledgers to improve the speed of transaction processing for coronavirus recovery stimulus.

That may be a far cry, considering that COBOL, an old computer language, is still in use in many state unemployment systems and the IRS. It is said to be another reason for the delay in stimulus payouts.

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