83% of constituents need real-time cash access, but government checks still crawl. Visa Direct's Curtis Webb says the card rails are ready, procurement is the bottleneck.
Alpha Score of 73 reflects strong overall profile with strong momentum, moderate value, strong quality, moderate sentiment.
The card rails to pay constituents in real time are already built. Banks are ready. Debit cards sit in millions of wallets. The only missing piece is the institutional will to stop printing checks.
Curtis Webb, head of B2B strategic payment solutions at Visa Direct, said as much in a conversation with PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster. The interview, published Wednesday, laid out a case that feels less like a product pitch and more like a diagnosis of a systems failure.
“Constituents need their money now,” Webb said.
Research conducted with Visa Direct found that 83% of constituents report needing access to money in real time, Webster noted. Delivery delays aren’t administrative hiccups. They’re a measurable financial hit to households running tight margins.
Tax refunds, disaster relief, juror fees, unclaimed property – these flows still crawl at paper speed. ACH relies on batch processing. Paper checks get stolen from mailboxes. Webb cited cases where intercepted checks triggered recovery efforts that cost more than the original payments.
Card-based credentials avoid those problems. Most people know where their debit card is. Fewer know their nine-digit routing number off the top of their head.
“As we started to unpeel that onion, we learned that there’s all of these players that are involved,” Webb said.
Federal momentum exists. Efforts to curtail check usage are active at the national level, and those signals ripple outward to states and localities. But the ripple is slow. Banking relationships differ. Legacy systems differ. Internal champions differ.
“Where things are going slowly” is in the procurement process, Webb said. Agencies face extended timelines to evaluate vendors, issue RFPs and deploy new capabilities. By the time a contract is awarded, the original urgency has often dissipated.
One practical workaround gaining traction is collective purchasing arrangements. By letting agencies adopt solutions already vetted through competitive processes, these structures cut duplication and allow smaller jurisdictions to access pricing negotiated by larger ones. Not glamorous. But it works.
Webb framed the endpoint simply. Modernizing payments creates the opportunity to “provide those resources back to our communities.” The math is real. So is the urgency.
Juror payments, tax refunds and small-dollar reimbursements are the easiest cases to modernize first. High volume, relatively simple, affecting real people who would feel the difference instantly. Pilot there, build operational confidence, then scale.
The rails are built. The banks are ready. The cards are in people’s wallets. The only thing left is deciding to use them.
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