The Federal Reserve Banks are working closely with the Department of the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service (Fiscal Service) to support the distribution of Economic Impact Payments (EIPs). As your service provider, the Federal Reserve Banks are committed to supporting your institution through this next release of EIPs. Although we do not control EIPs, we would like to share the following EIP-related resources at this time in hopes that your institution may find them beneficial for the ongoing EIP distributions.
FedACH® Services
The Federal Reserve Banks offer multiple services to assist your institution with processing EIPs. The FedPayments® Reporter ACH Received Entries Detail Report can facilitate analysis of EIPs sent to your institution’s account holders. Additionally, the FedACH Risk® RDFI Alert Service can provide early notice of EIPs being sent to your account holders. If your institution already subscribes to these services for analysis and alerting of EIPs, you will need to adjust the criteria due to EIP specifications. We also want to remind our customers that ACH returns should follow the normal return procedures in similar situations for tax refunds to have the payment re-issued.
Ask the Fed session
A recording of the December 30, 2020, Ask the Fed® session entitled, “Federal Economic Impact Payment Round 2: Information Bankers Need to Know” is available on the Ask the Fed (Off-site) website. In this session, senior executives from the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve System discussed the distribution of the second round of federal EIPs to individual taxpayers, and important information regarding the distribution of cash to financial institutions.
U.S. Treasury check and EIP verification
Fiscal Service encourages financial institutions and check cashers to verify the security features (Off-site) of a U.S. Treasury check, and to determine the status of EIP checks by using either:
- Treasury Check Verification Application (TCVA) (Off-site) for single queries; or
- Treasury Check Verification System (TCVS) (Off-site) for bulk queries using an automated programming interface (API).
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
Please refer to the Useful Links for Economic Impact Payment Information (Off-site) on the Fiscal Service website for a variety of EIP-related resources. Also, you are encouraged to check these websites frequently for updated information:
- Board of Governors COVID-19 Resources (Off-site)
- Fiscal Service’s Economic Impact Payments (EIP) Operational FAQs for Financial Institutions (Off-site)
- Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Economic Impact Payments on their way, visit IRS.gov instead of calling (Off-site)
- IRS Economic Impact Payment Information Center (Off-site)
- IRS Get My Payment FAQs (Off-site)
If you have remaining questions, please contact your Federal Reserve account executive.
FedCash® Services
Federal Reserve Cash Services departments in the 28 offices across the country are stocked with currency inventories sufficient to meet the needs of financial institutions during this second round of EIPs. We are working closely with our cash supply chain partners to understand anticipated demand for currency and support them as they make preparations to handle this additional demand.
Your continued support is needed
While Federal Reserve cash offices are prepared to meet the demand for currency orders, we ask our financial institution customers to place reasonable orders for currency that meet the demand of their customers, and not order more currency than is needed. In addition, the Federal Reserve Banks ask for your continued assistance in reassuring your customers that there will be an ample inventory of currency available to meet the needs of consumers throughout the EIP disbursement period.
We recognize the herculean efforts that all financial institutions have undertaken during this unprecedented time, and we thank you.
Action Item:
Refer to the Federal Reserve Bank Services COVID-19 Resources page regularly for up-to-date information.
