Maryland’s Department of Human Services sent nearly 507,000 chip-and-tap EBT cards to benefit recipients and estimates that about 85 percent have been activated. That leaves roughly 15 percent, about 76,000 cards by simple arithmetic, still unused. The department’s October 1 announcement says magnetic-stripe-only cards will deactivate “soon” and gives no date.
A September 30 cutoff that now reads “soon”
On August 24, Gov. Wes Moore announced the next phase of the “Don’t Wait, Activate” campaign, and the state set September 30 as the activation deadline. Current magnetic-stripe-only cards were to be deactivated that day. As of August 23, more than 294,000 recipients, 58 percent, had activated the new card.
The October 1 figures show how far the rollout moved in about five weeks: about 85 percent activated, and over 4.8 million transactions on the new cards since July. The department says it will keep contacting customers who have not used theirs over the coming month. It plans to release validated fraud-reduction data later in October…