Washington Lottery to pilot branded virtual Mastercard to speed prize payments and cut paper checks

At the Productivity Board Coffee Klatch, Washington Lottery finance director Todd Stebben previewed a June pilot of a Washington Lottery–branded prepaid Mastercard virtual card designed to speed prize payments, reduce paper checks and cut administrative costs.

Stebben said the pilot pairs a prepaid Mastercard with fintech partner FIS and a bank to deliver digital wallet credentials to winners, creating faster, more secure payments and richer payment data. "This will result in fewer paper checks, faster, more secure payments, and a better customer experience," Stebben said.

The Lottery also described a separate operational win: a vendor-driven cleanup of incoming electronic files that Stebben said reduced exception items from about 60,000 per month to roughly 100 and cut earnings-based credit service charges by about 82% in the first month of the change.

Stebben framed the virtual-card work as having broader applicability: if the pilot succeeds, other agencies could use similar virtual payment arrangements for reimbursements, refunds, small grants or customer incentives to reduce processing time and costs. He said the Lottery is coordinating with partners to document the approach and plans to share the design after the June relaunch.

Menager asked staff in the webinar chat for topics that could be useful statewide; Menager and Stebben agreed the Lottery would provide follow-up materials and that the Productivity Board might consider submitting the payment design for board review.

Reporting notes: Pilot timeline, vendor partners (Mastercard, FIS, bank) and the electronic-file cleanup numbers were stated by Todd Stebben during the March 14 Coffee Klatch; the article reports those figures as presented in the session.