The federal government has stopped issuing new paper checks for Social Security and most other federal benefit payments, and Treasury is now working to move the last recipients who still get a mailed check onto direct deposit or a prepaid debit card. The rule traces back to a 2025 executive order, but the timeline for people still on paper is open-ended rather than tied to a single hard deadline, and a waiver still exists for beneficiaries who can show a genuine barrier to switching. An estimated 280,000 or more people — fewer than 1% of all beneficiaries — were still receiving checks by mail as of mid-2026.
An Order That Ended New Paper Checks, Not a Single Cutoff Date
Executive Order 14247, “Modernizing Payments To and From America’s Bank Account,” set Sept. 30, 2025, as the date after which federal agencies could no longer issue new paper checks for disbursements, and the Social Security Administration confirmed in a June 2026 update that it “plans to complete the full transition to electronic payments for all beneficiaries this year.” That language describes an ongoing effort aimed at 2026, not a fixed date by which every remaining paper-check recipient loses their payment method, and SSA has not published a single named cutoff for the holdouts still on paper.
SSA frames the push in terms of cost and security rather than penalty. The agency says the average cost to print and mail a check has climbed to $3.07, roughly 20 times more expensive than an electronic transfer, and that paper checks are 16 times more likely to be lost, stolen, altered or returned undeliverable than a direct deposit or prepaid-card payment.
The same executive order reaches beyond Social Security. The IRS announced its own version of the switch for tax refunds, phasing out paper refund checks for individual filers beginning Sept. 30, 2025, citing the identical 16-times-more-likely-to-be-lost rationale. By the 2025 filing season, 93% of individual refunds — nearly 87 million payments — were already arriving by direct deposit, leaving only about 7% of filers still receiving a mailed refund check before the phase-out took hold.
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Two Electronic Options: Direct Deposit or a Prepaid Debit Card
Beneficiaries who want to switch can add bank account information through a personal my Social Security account, or ask their bank to transmit direct deposit information to SSA electronically. Someone without a bank account is not required to open one; SSA points those beneficiaries toward the Direct Express program, a prepaid debit card that receives the same monthly deposit a bank account would, enrolled through GoDirect.gov.
The Direct Express program itself is separately mid-transition, which has added to confusion around the paper-check phase-out. Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service selected Fifth Third Bank as the program’s new financial agent under a five-year agreement, and SSA told advocacy groups in May 2026 that new Direct Express enrollments began moving to Fifth Third that month, while existing cardholders’ accounts will transition later in 2026 or in early 2027. Current cardholders keep using their Comerica-issued card until it expires and do not need to take action before receiving official transition notice — a distinct process from, though it can be mistaken for, the paper-check switch itself.
Direct Express serves roughly 3.4 million people who receive Social Security, Veterans and other federal benefits on the prepaid card rather than through a traditional bank account, according to Fifth Third’s own announcement of the agreement. The bank noted that 57% of those cardholders have no income source beyond their federal benefits, underscoring why Treasury built the card option into the paper-check phase-out in the first place rather than requiring every recipient to open a bank account.
A Waiver Still Exists for Genuine Hardship Cases
Treasury has kept an exception process available for beneficiaries who face a real obstacle to receiving payments electronically. The waiver covers people with a documented mental impairment that makes managing an electronic account impractical, and people living in a remote location without reasonable access to a financial institution or the infrastructure needed to bank digitally. Approved waiver recipients continue to receive a mailed check rather than being forced onto a card or account that does not fit their circumstances.
Qualifying for that waiver requires more than a simple request. Federal regulation 31 CFR part 208 spells out three narrow categories: a documented mental impairment, life in a location remote enough that it lacks reasonable access to electronic banking, or, as a legacy carve-out, having been born on or before May 1, 1921. A beneficiary claiming the impairment or remote-location ground must submit a notarized written justification on Treasury’s Form FS 1201W before the Bureau of the Fiscal Service approves continued paper delivery. Treasury’s paperwork estimate, filed with a 2024 Federal Register notice renewing that form, projected roughly 3,250 people nationwide would file a notarized waiver request in a typical year — a small slice of the shrinking population still receiving checks by mail, and a sign of how much narrower the formal waiver is than simply switching to direct deposit or a Direct Express card.
For the shrinking group still receiving checks by mail, the practical decision is between three paths: set up direct deposit, enroll in Direct Express, or document a hardship case for a waiver before assuming a payment method simply stops arriving. SSA has not attached a penalty date to that decision the way some secondhand summaries have suggested, but the agency’s own stated goal of finishing the transition within the year means the remaining paper-check population is the group with the most reason to act now rather than wait for a deadline that, as of SSA’s most recent public update, has not been set.
This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
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