Continued information about the stimulus payments and how they will be disbursed through our banks

As a follow up to our email from yesterday (4/15), it is important to remember that the vast majority of taxpayers, including bank product customers, are still going to receive their Economic Impact Payment (EIP) directly from the IRS into their personal bank account. Only 6% of our bank product customers have had their payment routed to Republic Bank. These customers can be easily identified by using the IRS Get My Payment tool which will show the bank account number as the last 3 digits of the customer’s SSN + a zero.

All other taxpayers’ EIP may not have been released yet or will have the last 4 digits of their personal bank account listed on the IRS Get My Payment tool. It is our understanding that, so far, the IRS has only released about 60% of the payments. We do not have any specific information as to when the remaining payments will be released but we are confident the IRS is attempting to get all of these funds out as quickly as possible.

Our phone systems have been overwhelmed by an unprecedented volume of calls from “traditional” customers of Republic Bank looking for their EIP deposit as well as TRS taxpayers and tax offices. We expect to continue to have extended wait times for the next several days so please attempt to leverage our online tools as much as possible and read our communications thoroughly; which should include the information you need to answer questions from your customers. To help get information out to the taxpayers receiving these bank printed checks, we have sent emails and text messages directly to those customers to notify them that their EIP has been received and is currently being processed.

Also, please be aware that forms processing for taxpayer address changes, stop payments and check re-issues will likely take longer than usual due to the high volume of requests. Please allow a reasonable amount of time under the circumstances for our team to work through your request before reaching out to inquire about the status.

Lastly, we understand that processing these payments via a bank printed check and mailed out directly from Republic Bank to the taxpayers may not be an ideal solution. We did not expect to receive these payments. We have attempted to do the right thing and get this money to customers as quickly as possible while trying to take into consideration that many offices are closed and want to limit person to person contact to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Our alternative was to send the money back to the IRS and we simply do not feel that is a great option because of the significant delays it would cause for our mutual customers to get quicker access to these much-needed funds.

Thank you for your patience and support as we all work through this process!