Treasury says it’s disbursed 90M stimulus payments under Biden’s law

The Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said Wednesday that they’ve disbursed about 90 million stimulus payments authorized by the coronavirus relief law President Biden signed last week.

The payments that have been issued have a value of more than $242 billion, Treasury said.

The $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package provides for direct payments for most Americans of up to $1,400 per person.

Treasury and the IRS are sending the payments out in batches. The first batch was issued primarily by direct deposit, and was largely sent to people who provided their bank information to the IRS on their 2019 or 2020 tax returns, including users of a web tool that the IRS created last year for those who are not typically required to file tax returns. Treasury has also already mailed about 150,000 paper checks, valued at about $442 million, the department said.

Wednesday was the official payment date for the direct deposits. Some financial technology companies started crediting customers’ accounts with the payments as early as last Friday, while many of the large banks and credit unions started to make the funds available to customers on Wednesday. Treasury said that as of Wednesday, all recipients of the first tranche of direct deposit payments should be able to have access to the money.

The payments that have been issued make up more than half of the total number expected. Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the total cost of the payments to the federal government will be about $411 billion.

Treasury and the IRS are expected to distribute more payments by direct deposit, paper check and debit card in the coming weeks. People can check the status of their payment by using the IRS’s “Get My Payment” web tool. Treasury said that more than 35 million people have used the tool since this past weekend.