JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas –
The U.S. Treasury Department combined the previous Department of Defense stored value cards, EZPay, EagleCash and NavyCash, into a single card. During this roll-out process, the Treasury Department worked with Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland officials to pilot the program, simply called “EagleCash.”
“Thanks to the great relationship we have with the disbursing group at Lackland, we asked them to help us pilot the new devices,” explained Nadir Isfahani, U.S. Treasury Department stored value cards portfolio manager. “Jason Tucker and his team stepped up and helped get the new devices out to end-users to create a feedback loop as we tested and updated our point-of-sale terminals with merchants.”
EZPay has historically been there to help trainees at Basic Military Training pay for necessities such as haircuts, uniform items and toiletries whereas EagleCash and NavyCash aid service members in deployed locations where they may not want to use their personal debit or credit cards directly.
“Issuing a single card is a very good deal,” said Jason Tucker, 502nd Comptroller Squadron regionalized disbursing officer. “Our service members can use the same card throughout their career without having to repeatedly visit a finance office every time they travel.”
Each week, the 502nd CPTS disbursing office issues anywhere from 650 to 800 new EagleCash cards to basic trainees. Over the course of a year, Tucker and his team handed out about 35,000 cards totaling over $14 million in disbursements.
“The previous processes were very time-consuming both from an issuance perspective and accounting and reconciliation side,” Isfahani explained. “Now they get a roster file in the morning, they print the names of recruits on the cards and then transmit a file on the back end. The whole process takes maybe a couple of hours.”
Tucker and his team helped pave the way for DoD cardholders and finance offices by capturing lessons learned during their pilot program and helping apply best practices as other bases adopted EagleCash. The JBSA-Lackland disbursement office completed the migration from EZPay to EagleCash in six months.
The next step for EagleCash will be for the U.S. Treasury Department to expand the card’s capabilities from a strictly closed-loop to an “open-loop” system that enables cardholders to use EagleCash at all retailers, not just approved internal retailers. A similar system currently exists for NavyCash users but will be expanded in this new umbrella program.
For more information, please visit https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/eaglecash/.