Social Security payments to go to electronic from next week as the agency moves away from paper checks

After 85 years of sending paper checks to retirees, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is making the transition to electronic payments in what says it is an effort to modernize their services and improve efficiency.

As of September 30, the SSA will no longer issue paper checks to its almost 70 million recipients, but send benefits through direct deposit or a prepaid debit card.

“We have been communicating directly with the beneficiaries since July 1, and we have worked diligently to ensure that less than one percent of people who receive paper checks have enough time to register in direct deposit or receive direct express cards,” said a social security spokesman for CBS News in an email on Tuesday.

“When passing to electronic payments, our goal is to improve efficiency, security and ensure that beneficiaries receive their monthly benefits,” they added.

Social Security administration has emphasized that electronic payments provide a safer and safer way to receive benefits compared to paper checks, which according to the agency are more likely to be lost or stolen. Eliminating paper controls is also a cost savings measure: checks cost 50 cents each, compared to 15 cents for a transfer of electronic funds.

In an online publication, the SSA said it was sending notices to people who receive paper checks to alert them about change. The agency encouraged the recipients of paper checks to change the new payment options before the deadline to ensure that they receive their benefits in a timely manner.

The Social Security spokesman refused to comment on how people contacted or about the current state of their reach.

Exceptions for some paper verifications

While the agency is moving away from paper controls, there are some exceptions. The spokesman confirmed to CBS News that the agency will continue to issue paper checks to people who have no other way of receiving payments, echoing what He told CBS News In July, after announcing the transfer to electronic payments.

“The United States Treasury Department will give exceptions to the rule for qualified circumstances,” said the spokesman, without elaborating what are the qualified circumstances or the steps that the Social Security recipients would need to take to establish what they qualify.

President Trump established the change in paper checks with an executive order in March that demanded that all federal payments be digitized. Paper checks, said the White House at that time, impose “unnecessary costs; delays; and fraud risks, lost payments, robbery and inefficiencies.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, as well as defenders of the elderly, have noticed that approximately 600,000 people trusting the original SSA payment system often need paper checks because they cannot receive electronic deposits.

That includes people who “have no bankruptcy”, or those who lack access to traditional bank accounts. According to a Bankrate August report, non -banking represent 4.6% of the American population, and tend to trust checking and other alternative payment forms to administer their finances.

Although the Social Security Law was signed in 1935 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it was not until 1940 that the agency began sending paper checks to retired workers and their dependent, as well as the survivors of deceased insured workers. The first recipient of the monthly benefit was a woman named Ida M. Fuller.

A Vermont native, Fuller, worked as a teacher before becoming legal secretary. After submitting his retirement claim in 1939, he stopped at the Social Security Office in Rutland, Vermont, the city where he once attended school, to ask about its benefits. He had paid the relatively new program for approximately three years, according to Social Security administration.

“It wasn’t that I expected anything, yes, but I knew I had been paying for something called Social Security and wanted to ask Rutland’s people,” he said.

Fuller’s first monthly check, issued on January 31, 1940, was for $ 22.54.