That process is one of several improvements Treasury made during fiscal year 2026 to prevent fraud and improper payments, according to the release.
The new payment verification process implemented by Treasury during the fiscal year included new safeguards to verify critical information before federal payments are disbursed, while protecting legitimate payments, the release said.
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From its launch through the end of fiscal year 2026, this process screened more than 1.1 billion federal payments totaling $3.7 trillion and identified and returned 13,500 payments totaling $175 million that would have gone to deceased individuals, per the release.
Treasury also piloted additional verification capabilities that validate bank account ownership and the presence and format of Taxpayer Identification Numbers associated with federal payments, enabling Treasury to identify and return those that fail these verification requirements before funds are disbursed. These capabilities became fully operational on Sept. 30, according to the release.
During the fiscal year, Treasury also expanded federal programs’ access to the Do Not Pay program, which provides data and tools to help them verify identify and eligibility to prevent fraud and improper payments. Since the end of fiscal year 2025, the department expanded the share of federal programs that have access to Do Not Pay data sources from 4% to 99%. Treasury expects to onboard most of the remaining programs in early fiscal year 2027, per the release.
Because of the expanded use of Do Not Pay across the federal government, the number of records screened by this program increased from 641 million in fiscal year 2025 to 2.3 billion in fiscal year 2026, according to the release.
Treasury also added nine new datasets to the Do Not Pay program to expand the depth and breadth of information available to agencies for payment, identity and eligibility screening, per the release.
“Treasury continues to transform how the federal government protects taxpayer dollars by using better data, stronger controls and advanced technology to stop fraud and improper payments before money goes out the door,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the release.
The White House announced in August that it launched a website dubbed The Fraud Ledger (fraud.gov) that tracks the actions taken by its fraud task force and the dollar amounts recovered through those actions.
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