The Financial Management Service (or FMS) was a bureau of the

United States Department of the Treasury The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the Treasury, national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States. It is one of 15 current United States federal executive departments, U.S. government departments. ...

and provided several financial services for the

federal government A federation (also called a federal state) is an entity characterized by a political union, union of partially federated state, self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a #Federal governments, federal government (federalism) ...

. On October 7, 2012,

Secretary of the Treasury The United States secretary of the treasury is the head of the United States Department of the Treasury, and is the chief financial officer of the federal government of the United States. The secretary of the treasury serves as the principal a ...

Timothy Geithner Timothy Franz Geithner (; born August 18, 1961) is an American former central banker who served as the 75th United States secretary of the treasury under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013. He was the President of the Federal Reserve Bank o ...

issued a directive merging the FMS with the

Bureau of the Public Debt The Bureau of the Public Debt was an agency within the Fiscal Service of the Department of the Treasury that managed the public debt of the United States. It was consolidated with the Financial Management Service to form the Bureau of the ...

to form the new

Bureau of the Fiscal Service The Bureau of the Fiscal Service (Fiscal Service) is part of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The Bureau consolidates the activities of the previous Bureau of the Public Debt and the Financial Management Service, under the Office of Fis ...

Services

These services included centralized payment, collection, and reporting services, oversight of a daily

cash flow Cash flow, in general, refers to payments made into or out of a business, project, or financial product. It can also refer more specifically to a real or virtual movement of money. *Cash flow, in its narrow sense, is a payment (in a currency), es ...

of nearly $58billion into and out of federal accounts, disbursement of more than $1.5trillion to more than 100million individuals via

Social Security Welfare spending is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifically to social insurance ...

and

veterans' benefits The Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) under the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides a wide variety of benefits to retired or separated United States Armed Forces, United States armed forces personnel and their dependents or surviv ...

, issuance of

tax refund A tax refund is a payment to the taxpayer due because the taxpayer has paid more taxes than owed. United States According to the Internal Revenue Service, 77% of tax returns filed in 2004 resulted in a refund check, with the average refund c ...

s and other federal payments, collection of more than $2.67trillion per year in payments to the government through financial institutions, and collection of delinquent debts owed to the government. FMS had a total of 2,100 employees located in its headquarters offices in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

, and

Hyattsville, Maryland Hyattsville is a city in Prince George's County, Maryland, United States. It is an urban suburb of Washington, D.C. The population was 21,187 at the 2020 United States census. History Before Europeans reached the area, the upper Anacostia ...

, and its five regional centers in

Austin Austin refers to: Common meanings * Austin, Texas, United States, a city * Austin (given name), a list of people and fictional characters * Austin (surname), a list of people and fictional characters * Austin Motor Company, a British car manufac ...

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more t ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

, and

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. Before 1984, FMS was known as the Bureau of Government Financial Operations.

Credit Gateway

On September 13, 2010, the Financial Management Service started to use Credit Gateway as a deposit program for the receipt of federal agency

Fedwire Fedwire (formerly known as the Federal Reserve Wire Network) is a real-time gross settlement funds transfer system operated by the United States Federal Reserve Banks that allows financial institutions to electronically transfer funds between its ...

and ACH credit transactions. It is an effort to modernize the collections and cash management programs of the

US Department of the Treasury The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States. It is one of 15 current U.S. government departments. The department oversees the Bureau of Engraving and ...

and is being implemented in multiple phases over the course of two years. The Credit Gateway is operated by a commercial bank that has been designated as a financial agent of the government. The bank processes FMS transactions using its own infrastructure and commercial software. The transactions settle at

Federal Reserve Bank A Federal Reserve Bank is a regional bank of the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States. There are twelve in total, one for each of the twelve Federal Reserve Districts that were created by the Federal Reserve A ...

s, rather than at the designated commercial bank. The Credit Gateway processes transactions in real time to FMS reporting systems, namely the Transaction Reporting System.

References

External links

Financial Management Service website
{{authority control United States Department of the Treasury agencies Financial management Defunct agencies of the United States government