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RALEIGH — Lottery officials said Tuesday they will test selling lottery tickets through Ace Cash Express, a Texas-based check cashing operation.

The company, which has two locations in Greensboro and one in High Point, offers check cashing, utility payment, pre-paid debit cards and tax refund anticipation checks. Those are services, lottery critics point out, that are typically used by lower-income consumers with limited access to banking services and who might be able to least afford spending on the lottery.

Ace would not be the first check-cashing business to sell lottery tickets, said Lottery Director Tom Shaheen.

“We have a few, not many,” Shaheen said. “Ace is one that said they’d be interested but they only want to try it. They’re going to try it in 14 stores.”

The company has 31 outlets in North Carolina, according to the North Carolina Commissioner of Banks.

“It obviously raises a lot of concerns,” said Rob Schofield, a lawyer and director of research for the liberal watchdog group N.C. Policy Watch. His organization has been critical of the lottery since its inception.

“This is really one more step down the road that the lottery was already headed of being a poor tax,” Shofield said.

Shofield pointed out that the state had to sue Ace earlier this decade to stop the company from offering payday loans, a type of lending that North Carolina had recently outlawed.

Calls to Eric Norrington, Ace’s senior vice president for public affairs, were not returned Tuesday afternoon.

Shaheen said that the lottery cannot choose who it allows to sell lottery tickets based on their other businesses.

“Anybody in North Carolina who runs a business and can pass a background check is eligible,” Shaheen said. “We cannot turn anybody down for any reason other than they failed a background check or they’re trying to be in business selling lottery tickets only...Other than that we have no choice who sells.”

In other business, the Lottery Commission approved plans to offer some in-store marketing materials in Spanish.

According to Shaheen, the request to translate the materials came from both retailers and customers.

Shaheen called the policy “cautious” and said it was designed to avoid running afoul of a legal prohibition against marketing lottery tickets to certain geographic or demographic groups.

“This is not targeting...It’s translating documents,” Shaheen said.

The lottery already does some print advertising in Spanish, but only of ads that tell people how lottery proceeds are spent on education. There are no plans, Shaheen said, to do radio or television advertisements in Spanish.