As a regular here but NOT an Intuit employee, let me try to clear up the confusion with a long but very reasoned post. (Warning: These are my conclusions from what is available as well as my own experience; don't pillory me if I'm wrong. At the very worst, if you end up with a paper stimulus check you can speed it up by providing your direct deposit info to the IRS thru their yet-to-be-completed portal.)
Generally, when you have fees deducted from your refund, Intuit does tell the IRS to route it initially thru SBTPG's bank partner (traditionally Civista Bank); SBTPG then deducts the fees and forwards the balance by direct deposit to your own account. (Refund advances are repaid in a similar way.)
With their update of today, SBTPG has made it clear that stimulus payments will *NOT* go thru them; they will go thru the IRS. However, they ALSO continue to state that "(t)he IRS will issue direct deposits to taxpayers that received a direct deposit"; paper stimulus checks will go ONLY to those who "received a check printed from their tax professional's office or a debit card issued through Santa Barbara TPG". (The office-printed check option is not available thru TurboTax.) This indicates that those who received direct deposits of their refund balance from SBTPG to their bank account, brokerage account, or third-party prepaid card will get their stimulus checks direct-deposited to that account directly from the IRS.
The last bit of confusion is where SBTPG talks about "debit card(s) issued through Santa Barbara TPG". If you look at SBTPG's corporate homepage, www.sbtpg.com , you will see the debit card they offer to their independent tax preparer customers -- a Walmart MoneyCard, *NOT* a Turbo Card. Though both are issued by Green Dot Bank (whose parent also owns SBTPG), the Turbo Card is a direct relationship between Intuit and Green Dot Bank (as indicated by its Intuit branding); the SBTPG-issued Walmart MoneyCard is part of a multifaceted relationship between independent tax preparers, SBTPG, Green Dot Bank, and Walmart that includes other refund options *not* offered thru TurboTax. Turbo Cards are available thru TurboTax regardless of whether or not you elect to have SBTPG deduct TurboTax fees from your refund.
My guess is that SBTPG does *not* provide independent tax preparers with the direct deposit info from SBTPG-issued Walmart MoneyCards; thus the preparer did not send that info to the IRS as part of the actual electronic return. (Presumably, that allows the preparer's customers to choose between SBTPG's non-direct deposit options after the return is transmitted.) Intuit, however, obtains the direct deposit info for Turbo Cards directly from Green Dot Bank once you elect the Turbo Card as your refund option, and apparently *does* provide that info to the IRS on its returns.
In conclusion, I believe that *all* 2019 Turbo Card customers will get their stimulus checks direct deposited onto their Turbo Cards (same as with regular bank accounts), whether they had fees and/or refund advances deducted from their original refunds or not. (Indeed, because of the "ASAP Direct Deposit" feature it may arrive on your Turbo Card *before* it would have arrived in your bank account.) If the Washington Post report that the IRS will start issuing stimulus direct deposits today is correct, this conclusion will be proven (or disproven) very shortly.
