The Treasury Department’s Direct Express page, last updated September 1, 2026, does not mention Comerica Bank at all, and no federal or program page checked on October 3, 2026 gives a date when Comerica-issued Direct Express cards stop working. The silence matters because Fifth Third Bank bought and merged with Comerica earlier this year, and the benefit-card program moved with it. Cardholders who still hold Comerica cards have been told a change is coming, but not when.
What the four pages checked do say, and what they leave out
An absence claim is only as good as the pages it was tested against, so the list is specific. Four official pages were read for this article. The first is the Treasury Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s Direct Express program page. It names Fifth Third Bank as the issuer of the Direct Express Debit Mastercard, lists two customer-service numbers by card prefix (1-888-741-1115 for cards starting 5332, 1-833-347-9777 for cards starting 5141), and states there are no monthly fees or overdraft fees. It does not mention Comerica, a transition, replacement cards or any deactivation date.
The second is the Social Security Administration’s internal operating instruction, Emergency Message EM-26005 REV, effective May 19, 2026. It says Fifth Third Bank “has purchased and merged with Comerica Bank” and that new enrollment requests go to Fifth Third beginning May 18, 2026. It adds that the benefits on the Comerica card “will migrate to the Fifth Third card in the future.” The word is “future,” and no date follows it.
The third is SSA’s advisory notice to advocates dated May 18, 2026. It says the transition of existing accounts “will begin later this year or early next year.” That is a window of months, not a deactivation date, and it describes the start of a transition rather than the end of any card. The fourth is the program’s own website, which says Fifth Third will replace Comerica as financial agent and that existing Comerica cardholders should keep using their current app until further notice. It lists no cutoff date either. None of the four gives a date on which a Comerica-issued card stops working.
Two official sentences that describe the same card differently
The agencies and the program do agree that nobody should stop using a Comerica card today. They phrase the endpoint differently, though. SSA’s advocates notice says beneficiaries “should continue to use their Comerica-issued cards following transition until the card expires.” The program website says a cardholder can keep using the old card until the new Fifth Third card is received.
Those are two different triggers. One ties the old card to its printed expiration date, which varies from card to card and appears on the card itself. The other ties it to the arrival of a replacement, which depends on a schedule that nobody has published. Neither sentence is a date, and the pages do not say which one governs if the two come apart.
Advance notice is promised, which puts the mailing address at the center
What the official pages do promise is warning. The advocates notice says beneficiaries “will receive advance notice of the transition of their accounts” and that they must keep their contact information up to date so they receive all communications. EM-26005 REV tells cardholders to confirm that their email and mailing address are current with Comerica, and tells customers they will receive communication before a new card arrives.
The promise has an obvious dependency. A notice mailed to an old address does not help a cardholder who moved after enrolling. The Treasury page describes Direct Express as a card for Social Security, SSI and veterans benefit recipients without bank accounts. The pages do not say how many cardholders still hold Comerica cards. No page read for this article states a cardholder count, so none is given here.
The two-card case SSA spells out
EM-26005 REV describes one situation in detail. A recipient who receives more than one type of benefit through Direct Express can have separate cards initially. The customer has the option to call Treasury’s Electronic Payment Solution Center at 1-800-333-1795 to consolidate. The instruction adds that, if the customer chooses not to consolidate, there will be two separate Direct Express cards, one for each benefit type, and that the customer should keep both until migration completes.
That matters for the open question about timing. A household holding one Comerica card and one Fifth Third card is exposed to two different timelines, and the pages publish neither. The Treasury page lists 800-333-1795 as the enrollment line, answered 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Eastern, Monday through Friday. The same number appears in SSA’s instruction as the consolidation line.
How the absence was tested, and what could change it
The finding here is narrow on purpose. It is not a claim about what Treasury, SSA or Fifth Third have planned internally. It is that none of the pages checked states a date. SSA’s own instruction frames the move as happening “in the future,” and its advocates notice gives a window of later this year or early next year.
The finding changes the moment any of the four pages is updated with a date, and the Treasury page’s September 1 revision, which still omits Comerica, is the most recent change any of them shows. Until a page publishes a date, the statements above are the whole of what the agencies have put on the record, and the one practical instruction they have given is to keep using the Comerica card.
A card change with no date attached
The Comerica-to-Fifth Third transition is the kind of change that leaves a Direct Express cardholder with a working card today and no published date for the replacement. Recipients in that position hold a working card, a promised advance notice and no published date, which leaves the gap between a mailing and a payment day to be managed by the household.
The Social Security Check Protection Kit includes the 2026 payment calendar and a first-24-hours plan for a late or missing payment, so a household can mark its deposit dates and know the first moves if a payment does not show up.
Open The Social Security Check Protection Kit to map the next deposit dates →
This piece was drafted with AI assistance; the statements were checked against the Treasury Fiscal Service and SSA pages named above, read on the date of publication.
