A second round of pandemic relief payments may arrive by direct deposit as early as Tuesday night, after the Treasury Department delivered a “payment file” to the Federal Reserve.
According to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the file for “Americans’ Economic Impact Payments” was delivered on Tuesday.
“@USTreasury has delivered a payment file to the @FederalReserve for Americans’ Economic Impact Payments. These payments may begin to arrive in some accounts by direct deposit as early as tonight and will continue into next week,” he wrote in a tweet, adding that paper checks will start being mailed Wednesday.
.@USTreasury has delivered a payment file to the @FederalReserve for Americans’ Economic Impact Payments. These payments may begin to arrive in some accounts by direct deposit as early as tonight and will continue into next week (1/2)
— Steven Mnuchin (@stevenmnuchin1) December 29, 2020
Those receiving the $600 relief checks can see the status of payments on the IRS’s website.
The direct payments are part of the $900 billion coronavirus relief package that President Trump signed on Sunday. The $600 payments are the second round of relief checks meant to mitigate the economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic. The first round, with $1,200 payments to roughly 80 million people, happened in the spring.
The latest wave of financial assistance was attached to a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill that will fund the federal government for the rest of the fiscal year, ending Sept. 30. The relief package also includes $300 billion in new loans for small businesses, as well as $300 per week in enhanced unemployment insurance benefits.
Trump urged Congress to increase the direct coronavirus payments to $2,000, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked a Democratic attempt to answer that call on Tuesday.
