Welfare Recipients Put Card in Machine, Get Paid in Cash
Welfare recipients began receiving their monthly payments from electronic cash machines Monday in an experimental program sponsors say is the first of its kind in the nation.
Plastic cash cards have been issued to 1,000 recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children participating in Ramsey County’s six-month pilot project, enabling them to collect all or part of their payments by machine.
“You don’t have to worry about your check being stolen out of the mailbox,” Michelle House of St. Paul said after she used one of the new machines at a Sears, Roebuck & Co. store near the state Capitol.
The program is expected to reduce disbursement costs and ease the county’s problems in finding depository banks willing to have their lobbies crowded with AFDC recipients on the first of the month.
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