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SAN FRANCISCO – Alameda County on began a pilot program to test making payments to welfare recipients using debit cards instead of issuing checks. 

In the program, which launched Thursday, the aid is deposited into accounts recipients can access using their debit cards at grocery stores or regular ATMs. 

The program is intended to reduce the stigma of using paper food stamps at grocery stores, eliminate long waits at food stamp redemption centers, reduce the number of lost and stolen benefits and help bring clients into the mainstream economy. 

In Alameda County, 16,000 such debit cards with a value of $6.9 million were issued this month to cash-benefit clients, and another 15,000 cards worth $3 million went to food-stamp clients, said Don Edwards, information services director with the Social Services Agency. 

Alameda and Yolo Counties are the first to test the program and whatever the state learns will help the rest of the state when their public-assistance clients are issued electronic benefit cards, said John Gordon, a spokesman with the state Department of Social Services.