Vets alerted to changes In benefit payments methods

Starting Saturday, April 20, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will no longer send a veteran’s benefits payments or his/her family members’ benefits payments to more than one bank account.

This change is being made to help protect veterans and their family members from fraud and to ensure that the VA is able to pay veterans on time – every time – without error, according to the Under Secretary for Benefits Josh Jacobs, of the Veterans Benefits Administration.

“What this means for our local veterans is that all of them and all of their beneficiaries who receive GI bill payments and other benefit payments across multiple banking accounts will need to select one account by the April 20 deadline,” said Kerr County Veterans Service Office Jennifer Sanchez.

“For example, if a veteran receives GI Bill payments to one bank account and a disability compensation payment to another bank account, they will need to consolidate and select one bank account for all payments by April 20,” Sanchez added.

This shift in payment methods is happening as a part of the VA’s efforts to modernize the 50-year-old, antiquated GI Bill payment system. Once fully deployed, the platform will improve claims processing and customer service by providing direct, online, one-stop access to GI Bill benefits and information, Jacobs said.

This financial change will impact nearly 50,000 of 800,000 total GI Bill beneficiaries. “Fortunately, the VA has all of the contact information for these veterans and we have successfully managed many transitions like this in the past,” Jacobs stated. “In fact, we have already transitioned all other VA benefit payments to one account – education programs are the remaining outliers.”

“We are told that the VA will be aggressively reaching out to these students through text message, phone and email on a weekly basis through April 20,” Sanchez added. “They’ll continue to receive the messages until they have updated their information in VA.gov. “The important thing to remember is that no veteran will miss a benefits payment of any type.”

For students who fail to update their bank information by the deadline, the VA will consolidate their payments on their behalf and elect their non-education benefit pay account as their primary bank account.

The easiest way for beneficiaries to make the necessary change is to visit va.gov/change-direct-deposit/ and read the directions and follow the links included on that page.