Frequently Asked Questions for Financial Institutions and Agencies

Financial institutions can use the Treasury Check Verification System (TCVS) which is publicly available.

To find a check in TCVS, you need your financial institution’s routing transit number (RTN), the check number and dollar amount.

If you need more information about a U.S. Treasury check, including the payee’s name, work with your IT department to interface with the TCVS Application Programming Interface (API).

If you would like to sign up for the TCVS API, please follow the steps below:

1. Visit Fiscal Service’s TCVS website.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Terms and Conditions.
3. Complete Fiscal Service’s Terms and Conditions for TCVS API Keys application for financial institutions and e-mail it to Fiscal Service at PaymentIntegrity@fiscal.treasury.gov.

When a U.S. Treasury check is not negotiated, the API will return the payee name so that you can more accurately verify U.S. Treasury checks.  The API allows for both a single check verification or bulk verification of up to 1,000 checks.  It is available to financial institutions at no cost. Fiscal Service requires only one Terms and Conditions application to be completed for each bank as the issued API keys may be used by any authorized personnel in your financial institution.

Note: Treasury checks are valid for one year from the issue date. You should not accept a Treasury check that is older than one year.

Reference Chapter 5 of the Fiscal Service Green Book at https://tfx.treasury.gov/reference-books/green-book#Chapter5Reclamations for an example of a reclamation debit on the account statement.

You can change or add e-mail addresses to which the reclamations are sent by completing the Federal Reserve FedMail form and e-mailing it to the address shown in Section 1.

The Bureau of Fiscal Service has developed an electronic version of the current FS-133 form. This allows financial institutions to submit a response to the NOR electronically through the Department of the Treasury’s Pay.gov web portal.  The process is described in more detail in the Automated Reclamation Processing System (ARPS) User Guide.

Log into TCIS and use Integrated View to look up the payee by their payee ID number and check issue date (or date range).  You should be able to find your agency’s payment from the list of payments for that payee.

If a payee alerts your agency that they didn’t get their check, a stop payment must be placed on the check. To place a stop payment, submit a claim of non-receipt through TCIS or your agency’s internal processing system. The claim must be submitted within one year of the date the check was issued. Your agency will get credit for the check if it is not negotiated; this is called an Unavailable Check Cancellation (UCC).

That depends. The time to process a check claim is determined on a case-by-case basis. There are several actions that can be taken in processing a claim, such as requiring more information from the bank of first deposit, the payee, or the issuing agency.

Also, this process may require handwriting analysis, an investigative report by the U.S. Secret Service, and a refund from a financial institution.

Reclamation credits
Daily, after Treasury receives the money from the financial institution.

Unavailable Check Cancellations (UCC)
We process UCC credits daily for all claims against non-negotiated checks.

Limited Payability Cancellation
Agencies are credited on a monthly basis for checks that are not negotiated after one year.