“We are moving beyond ‘pay and chase’ and making prevention the federal government’s first line of defense,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said when his department reported its fiscal 2026 payment-integrity results on October 6. Behind the line is a set of checks that now sit in front of federal payments: Treasury says its capabilities to verify bank account ownership and taxpayer identification numbers became fully operational on September 30, 2026.
Treasury’s release says the department piloted the checks first, confirming who owns the account a payment is headed to and whether a taxpayer identification number is present and in the right format. Payments that fail can be identified and returned before the money is disbursed.
For anyone who receives money from a federal agency, the practical question is whether the name on the receiving account and the number on file are the same ones the agency has. The release does not say how a recipient would be told about a failed check, or how one would be resolved. It says only that controls are meant to protect legitimate payments.
Most federal programs still left to join Treasury’s Do Not Pay screening are expected to finish in early fiscal 2027, which began October 1.
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What the September 30 date covers
The release names two capabilities: checks of bank account ownership, and checks of whether a Taxpayer Identification Number is present and correctly formatted. Treasury does not define the terms further. A taxpayer identification number can be a Social Security number or another number the IRS issues, and the release describes the second check as covering the presence and format of that number.
The ownership check looks at where the money is going, which is a separate question from who is named on the payment. The executive order Treasury cites describes the test as whether the receiving account belongs to the payee.
Treasury links the work to Executive Order 14249, signed by President Trump on March 25, 2025, and says the efforts fulfill its key requirements.
What the executive order asked Treasury to check
The order, titled “Protecting America’s Bank Account Against Fraud, Waste, and Abuse,” tells Treasury to set “pre-certification verification processes” for payments it makes. Among nine checks it asks Treasury to consider are that the payment amount and payee name are correct, that each payee has a proper Social Security number, Taxpayer Identification Number or Employer Identification Number, and that the account “is held at a financial institution and is open, valid, and belongs to the payee” or a valid designee.
The order also says Treasury may consider returning payments that fail verification to the agency that requested them for reconciliation, and it directs Treasury to create a transparent process for requesting exemptions. It adds that the order does not create enforceable rights.
The 99 percent Do Not Pay milestone
The account checks are part of a wider expansion. Treasury says access to its Do Not Pay service, a set of databases used to screen payments, grew from about 4 percent of federal programs at the end of fiscal 2025 to about 99 percent in fiscal 2026. Treasury expects most remaining programs to finish onboarding in early fiscal 2027.
The number of records screened against Do Not Pay data sources passed 2.3 billion, up from 641 million in fiscal 2025. Treasury credits wider use, payment verification and screening done for states through a program called PARIS. It also added nine new datasets, among them OpenCorporates company registration data, certain verification against the Social Security Administration’s Numident file, and grantee audit findings from the Federal Audit Clearinghouse.
The $175 million in payments to the dead
On payment verification, Treasury says it screened more than 1.1 billion federal payments worth about $3.7 trillion in fiscal 2026. Within that volume, it identified and returned about 13,500 payments totaling $175 million that would have gone to deceased individuals. The average works out to a little under $13,000 per payment, though the release gives only the totals.
Those figures are Treasury’s own, and the release does not say how many of the screened payments failed the new account or number checks, or how many were later corrected and paid. That split is the number that would show how often a legitimate recipient is caught.
Keeping payment details consistent with the agency
Treasury’s release is the free official source, and it states the dates and totals above. It does not tell recipients what to do, so the reasoned step is to follow what the executive order lists as the checks: a payee name, a number and an account that belong together.
That means making sure the name on the bank account matches the name the paying agency has, that the Social Security number or other taxpayer number on file is correct, and that any change of bank or address was reported to the agency itself rather than relied on through a third party. A recipient who sees a payment delayed or returned should contact the agency that pays them, since the order sends failed payments back to the requesting agency for reconciliation.
The detail to watch next is early fiscal 2027, when Treasury expects the last of the programs to join Do Not Pay, and any guidance Treasury publishes on how returned payments are resolved.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Financial Wire’s editorial team.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
