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Couple shares experience of receiving stimulus money on a debit card

At first, the Pearsons thought it was just junk mail.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Roughly 140 million Americans have already received their stimulus checks - either in the form of a check in the mail or direct deposit. 

But there are still 10 million waiting for their federal aid, and when it does arrive, it may fool you as a scam.

Michelle Pearson and her husband have been waiting for their stimulus check to enter their bank account since President Trump rolled out the federal aid last month.

Thursday, they finally received it; however, it's not how they expected it.

"We got in the mail, an envelope that looks like this, so it kinda looks like junk mail which we thought it was junk mail but when I felt it there was a card inside," Michelle said. "So I thought well I better open it up and then inside was a visa card that looks like this."

The Pearson's are one of nearly 4 million Americans who are receiving their stimulus in the form of a prepaid debit card.

"We filed our income taxes with H&R Block," she said. "We thought we'd get direct deposit and we hadn't heard anything about debit cards so we were pretty surprised."

"We thought it might be a scam or wasn't real. We didn't know."

Luckily, it's not a scam.

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And although not complaining about the free money, this form does have its drawbacks since her local bank doesn't have the equipment necessary to deposit the money from the card into her account.

"It said I needed to go to an 'Allpoint ATM machine' and I Googled and that's about 30-40 miles from here."

So a word to the wise if your waiting on your stimulus: Make sure it's not junk mail before throwing it away.

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