When Lisa Giuntini gets a check, it can take months before she gets to the bank to cash it. So when the Lawrenceville woman found out her time spent in jury duty would be paid with a debit card instead, she was thrilled.
“I think a debit card is more convenient,” Giuntini said. “I think it’s the way to go. Paper checks are antiquated. I prefer this always over paper.”
Since this spring, Gwinnett County jurors have opened their mail to find their $30-a-day salaries loaded on to debit cards instead of printed on checks. The county is likely one of the first to make the switch, said a spokeswoman for the Association County Commissioners of Georgia; other local counties have confirmed they still send checks to jurors.
In Gwinnett, it costs an average of $11.59 to print and send each check; the price includes the costs of reissuing checks that are lost or have incorrect addresses. The debit cards, which are issued by JP Morgan Chase, cost Gwinnett $2 apiece.
Jurors seem happy with the change, said Paul Turner, Gwinnett’s treasury division director. The move was originally intended as a way to streamline and cut costs for the roughly 400 checks Gwinnett was issuing weekly.
“Nobody’s pushed back,” he said. “I think we’ve made our jurors happy.”
Indeed, Giuntini said her jury pay will go straight to her daughter in the form of the debit card, but a check would have languished.
The move is more convenient for Gwinnett residents without bank accounts, said Maria Woods, Gwinnett’s chief financial officer. The county is considering expanding the effort to poll workers, who also get paid in small, irregular checks.
A spokeswoman from JP Morgan Chase wouldn’t comment on how many of the debit cards have been activated or used, but Gwinnett County data from 2012 and 2013 showed that fewer than 2.5 percent of all checks issued each year had not been cashed. When a check isn’t cashed, the funds eventually go to the state and residents can claim them years later. At the beginning of October, Gwinnett had 2,446 outstanding checks worth $91,440.
With the debit cards, a monthly fee of $1.5o is collected by JP Morgan Chase after the card has been inactive for a year. That means after a year of disuse, a $30 card — pay for one day served — would be empty in 20 months. That money previously would have ended up in the state’s general fund and could have been claimed later, said Nick Genesi, a spokesman for the Department of Revenue. He said the department does not track if other counties have made the switch.
“If there’s any kind of impact, it’s going to be very minor,” he said.
Cobb County considered a similar move, but ultimately decided against it, said Donna Tschappat, director of state court services in the county. There, the cost to print roughly 80 checks a week is less than $1 apiece. Tschappat said she felt the system the county has in place was working efficiently and money from uncashed checks should go to the county, not the bank.
So far, Turner said, no one in Gwinnett has received negative feedback. Abby Carter, the jury manager for Gwinnett County courts, said she finds the cards to be more “customer friendly.”
Bartow Morgan, the CEO of Gwinnett-based Brand Banking Co., said he sees fewer people going to his bank branches with the old checks. The cards, he said, are a good move.
“We should bank the customer the way the customer wants to be banked,” he said. “All in all, it probably is empowering the customer.”
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