White House says some could get $1,400 payments by weekend

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that people could start receiving $1,400 direct payments in their bank accounts as soon as this weekend, after President Biden signed the legislation authorizing the payments earlier in the afternoon.

“People can expect to start seeing direct deposits hit their bank accounts as early as this weekend,” Psaki said during a press briefing.

She added that those payments are “just the first wave” and that more will be issued over the next several weeks.

Biden on Thursday signed a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that provides for payments to most Americans of up to $1,400 per person. Psaki said that 158.5 million households can expect to receive payments.

The speed at which the $1,400 payments are being issued is similar to the speed at which the IRS started to issue the payments of up to $600 that were enacted in December.

Those payments started to land in people’s bank accounts two days after former President Trump signed the legislation that authorized them.

The Biden administration faces pressure to get the relief in the new law to individuals and businesses as quickly as possible, in an effort to boost the recovery from the pandemic and the related economic downturn. While the direct payments are being disbursed quickly, other forms of assistance in the relief package could take longer to allocate.