NYC & MIGRANT BENEFITSNYC to Launch Debit-Card Pilot Program for Migrants
New York City announced it was launching what it described as a cost-saving pilot program to provide 500 migrant families with prepaid debit cards to buy food and baby supplies. The debit-cards will be loaded with an average of $12.52 per person, per day, for 28 days, and the city says the program will save $600,000 per month and $7.2 million annually relative to the current system of providing boxes with non-perishable food.
New York City announced it was starting what it described as a cost-saving pilot program to provide 500 migrant families with prepaid debit cards to buy food and baby supplies. Participants will be allowed to use the cards at specified bodegas, grocery stores, supermarkets, and convenience stores, and use it only for food and baby supplies.
City Hall calls the program a “more cost-effective technology pilot program to distribute pre-paid immediate response cards to asylum seekers to purchase food and baby supplies in lieu of the city’s current system of providing non-perishable food boxes to migrant families staying in hotels.”
NYC stresses these three aspects of the pilot program: migrants will receive prepaid debit cards, not credit cards; the participants would be permitted to purchase only food and baby supplies; and they will be able to do so at only at certain types of retailers.
A spokesperson for Mobility Capital Finance, or MoCaFi, the company that New York City is partnering with to launch the program, noted that “card usage will be restricted to grocery and convenience stores’ merchant category codes for purchasing food,” meaning they can’t be used to buy other types of items.
MoCaFi, confirmed to the AP that the cards “are not credit cards.”
The city says that pre-paid debit cards will replace non-perishable food boxes the city has been distributing to migrants.
“What had been happening in this particular program is that every couple of days, we were going to the hotel and we were delivering food,” Adams’ chief of staff Camille Joseph Varlack said during a Feb. 5 media briefing. “And so, what ended up happening is you have the cost for the food itself as well as the cost for delivery services.”
Kayla Mamelak, a spokesperson for New York City Mayor Eric Adams, told AP that the debit cards will be loaded with an average of $12.52 per person, per day, for 28 days.
These prepaid cards are similar to the EBT cards that the federal government uses to administer benefits to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) participants.
Mamelak said that the city has allocated $53 million to the pilot program, which will save $600,000 per month and $7.2 million annually.
The city noted that the pilot program will allow migrants to purchase food and baby supplies of their choosing, and Adams said that the program will achieve more than savings: The participants using the cards will likely help stimulate the local economy.
Mamelak told the AP that migrants in the “cost-effective technology pilot program” will only receive prepaid debit cards.
“We will provide prepaid debit cards to an initial 500 migrant families with children who may use the prepaid cards exclusively at bodegas, grocery stores, supermarkets, and convenience stores to ensure the money is spent on food and baby supplies,” she wrote in an email.
Mamelak further explained that participants “will be required to sign an affidavit affirming that they will be using these cards for the intended purposes” and that doing otherwise will risk removal from the program.
