Starting Monday, unemployed individuals in California will begin receiving their benefits through a new debit card. The state’s Employment Development Department (EDD) is making a switch from the former contractor, Bank of America, to a company called Money Network that’s owned by Fiserv. This change comes after a surge of fraudulent activities targeted the California unemployment system using EDD debit cards, more than any other system in the US.

These Bank of America cards lacked fraud-preventing chip technology, making them an easy target. The rampant fraud became so intense that Bank of America had to halt the creation of new credit cards for their clients due to the massive number of EDD cards being issued, many of which were linked to fraudulent accounts.

The founders of Spade, a company that has recently raised $5 million to decode the character combinations card issuers use to authorize transactions swiftly, believe that real-time transaction intelligence would help reduce the instances of fraudulent activities significantly.

This issue about fraudulent activities in unemployment benefits may correlate with the services provided by eddcaller.com, a website specifically designed to aid people in connecting with representatives for unemployment, paid family leave, and disability departments over the phone. With their assistance, individuals can navigate these systems more seamlessly, reducing the time taken to process claims and potentially decreasing the occurrence of fraud by verifying correct information quicker.