House Speaker Robert DeLeo is sounding the alarm on a new frontier of potential welfare abuse, telling the Herald he wants safeguards on the Bay State’s multibillion-dollar remittance business that he fears could be siphoning taxpayer cash to foreign countries.

DeLeo said he has no sense how much welfare cash, if any, is being funneled overseas, but that the uncertainty alone is a concern.

“I think it’s wrong to be happening, no matter who it’s being sent to,” DeLeo said. “I just want to make sure it isn’t going on, that Massachusetts taxpayer money is staying in Massachusetts.”

DeLeo is pushing legislation as part of the state’s new welfare reform bill that would prohibit Bay State recipients from using their EBT cards — and the cash assistance they carry — for international wire transfers.

Of the $2.4 billion that money-transfer companies reported wiring out of country in 2012, 40 percent of it went to five countries, according to data from the state Division of Banks. Brazil received $333 million; the Dominican Republic, $220 million; Guatemala, $144 million; El Salvador, $130 million; and China, $118 million.

“For us to have any discussion of our money going overseas is appalling to me,” the Winthrop Democrat said. “I can fully understand and appreciate people, no matter what ethnic group they may be of, sending money to family member overseas who are in need — as long as it’s not taxpayer money.”

Also tucked in the comprehensive bill is another DeLeo-backed measure to keep groceries bought with welfare benefits stateside. By requiring that groceries be for “home consumption and use,” the legislation addresses an area of fraud highlighted by a series of New York Post reports in July that found Big Apple welfare recipients buying food in the U.S. and shipping it in large plastic barrels, mainly to Caribbean countries, where it opened a black market for the taxpayer-funded goods.

The same bins are sold in some Boston supermarkets, though it’s unclear how rampant the practice may be in the Bay State.

“That game is over,” DeLeo said, “if it does exist.”

James Arena-DeRosa, the USDA’s Northeast Regional Administrator, said in July after the reports surfaced that while Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits are federally funded, states have the power to “pursue” any instances of fraud they find.

Matt Kitsos, a spokesman for the Department of Transitional Assistance, said officials only received the bill on Friday and are “closely reviewing” it.

DeLeo said he wants to sit down with DTA Commissioner Stacey Monahan and Health and Human Services Secretary John ?Polanowicz to discuss how to enforce the new measures, an important note given the difficulty of tracking how cash assistance is spent.

“It’s important that the message goes out,” DeLeo said. “If it takes subsequent legislation to give us more powers, then I’m willing to do it. But I want to get this law on the books immediately.”