The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced on Tuesday that new federal payment safeguards screened more than 1.1 billion payments totaling about $3.7 trillion during fiscal year 2026, while the government expanded access to its Do Not Pay screening tools.
Treasury said the system identified and returned about 13,500 payments totaling $175 million that would have gone to deceased individuals. The department also said approximately 99% of federal programs can now access all Do Not Pay data sources for which they are legally authorized, up from about 4% at the end of fiscal year 2025.
The Do Not Pay program gives federal agencies and federally funded state-administered programs data and tools to verify identity and eligibility before payments are issued. Treasury said agencies screened more than 2.3 billion records against Do Not Pay data sources during fiscal year 2026, nearly four times the 641 million records screened the previous fiscal year.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in the department’s release that Treasury is “moving beyond ‘pay and chase’ and making prevention the federal government’s first line of defense.”
The department added nine datasets to Do Not Pay, including company-registration information, select Social Security Numident verification, and grantee audit findings. Treasury also began checking bank-account ownership and the presence and format of Taxpayer Identification Numbers. Those capabilities became fully operational September 30.
The changes implement portions of Executive Order 14249, which President Donald Trump ordered on March 25, 2025. The order directs Treasury to establish pre-certification checks that include whether a payee is deceased and whether a listed financial account is valid and belongs to the payee or an authorized designee.
The latest figures build on a July update in which Treasury said it had screened more than 885 million payments worth about $2.77 trillion and returned more than 4,900 payments worth about $99 million tied to deceased payees, as The Dallas Express previously reported.
The Government Accountability Office found that federal agencies estimated about $186 billion in improper payments across 64 programs in fiscal year 2025. Improper payments and fraud are not interchangeable: GAO says improper payments include payments that should not have been made or were made in the wrong amount, and not all improper payments result from fraud.
