Skip to main content

Are you familiar with the Deposit Visual Reference Guide?

The Ops Stop provides your organization with a one-stop shop full of helpful operational resources offered by the Federal Reserve Banks. For this installment of the series, we are featuring the FedCash® Services Deposit Visual Reference Guide, which we hope will be helpful to your institution.

Did you know that in December 2020 U.S. currency in circulation reached $2 trillion? Are you aware that the Federal Reserve processes about 100,000 notes — per hour — in each of its 28 cash processing facilities across the country? That’s a lot of currency! In order to keep those processes running smoothly it’s critical that all financial institutions depositing currency and coin with their local Federal Reserve Bank closely follow the Federal Reserve’s depositing guidelines.

The Deposit Visual Reference Guide (DVRG) was created to provide financial institutions with pictorial, step-by-step instructions for different components of, and scenarios for, depositing currency and coin. The guide outlines what to do and what not to do when preparing currency and coin deposits, related to:

  • Straps
  • Bands
  • Bundles
  • Bags or containers
  • Contaminated or mutilated currency

Following these guidelines carefully will help ensure your deposits are not rejected by the servicing Federal Reserve Bank and returned to your institution, at your expense. The guide is a supplement to the Cash Services Manual of Procedures (CSMOP) (PDF) and does not include all requirements.

Action Item:

The DVRG is also available in printable format (PDF), so print it out and keep a hard copy handy.