Notices and Agreements
Pay.gov is a Web transaction portal for public access to Federal agency services, sponsored by the United States Department of the Treasury's Fiscal Service. This document sets out Pay.gov's general legal, privacy, and accessibility notices. To the extent that the terms of these notices require you to take or refrain from taking certain actions, you must agree to abide by these terms in exchange for obtaining Pay.gov's services.
Pay.gov provides services for other Federal agencies. To the extent that Pay.gov is acting on behalf of an agency, please refer to the agency's own notices and agreements. To the extent that Pay.gov is acting on its own, these Pay.gov notices and agreement apply. In case of a discrepancy between an agency's notices and agreements and Pay.gov's notices and agreement, Pay.gov's notices and agreement apply.
Please read this document carefully. By accessing, browsing, or using the Pay.gov Web site or otherwise agreeing to these terms you acknowledge that you have read and understood these terms and agree to comply with and be bound by these terms without modification.
General Legal Notices
- Rules of Behavior
- Pay.gov Authentication Services
- Communications
- Links to Third-Party Sites
- Intellectual Property
- Limitations on Liability
- Comments, Feedback, and Customer Service Questions
- Online Forms
- Amendments
- Miscellaneous
- Financial Notices
- Definitions
- Handling of sensitive data
- Rules of Behavior
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Pay.gov Authentication Services
To engage in certain transactions, you may be issued Pay.gov authentication credentials.
You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your authentication credentials. You must not share these credentials with others. If you believe that the secrecy of your Pay.gov credentials may have been or may about to be violated, you must cancel your credentials or notify a security administrator or Pay.gov Customer Service agent. Please Contact Us for more information.
We reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to terminate or suspend your access to the Pay.gov authentication credentials at any time, without notice, including for inactivity.
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Communications
We may send communications regarding Pay.gov or any transactions involving Pay.gov to the electronic mail (e-mail) address you have supplied to Pay.gov. Because e-mail is an insecure form of communication, we will attempt to limit any information sent to your e-mail address to non-sensitive information, unless you specifically request otherwise.
You must maintain, at your own expense, Internet access and services necessary to maintain this e-mail account and you must update the profile for your Pay.gov authentication credentials (if any) in a timely manner to reflect all changes to that profile, including e-mail address. We will have no liability for your failure to receive any communication that it has sent to your designated e-mail address.
Although Pay.gov encrypts sensitive data, we cannot guarantee that any data you transmit to it or other Federal agencies while using Pay.gov will not be intercepted by third parties.
All communications made in electronic and paper format will be considered to be "in writing".
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Links to Third-Party Sites
Pay.gov may contain links to third party Web sites not under our control ("linked sites"). We are not responsible for the contents or absence of contents of any linked sites. We provide these links to you only as a convenience and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement by us. You are responsible for viewing and abiding by the notices and agreements posted at the linked sites.
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Intellectual Property
Although Government works generally cannot be copyrighted, the Government can acquire copyright to works created by third parties and that may be the case concerning certain documents, software, and other intellectual property made available through Pay.gov services. Your use of copyrighted property must be in accordance with copyright law, which can apply regardless of whether a copyright symbol marks the property.
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Limitations on Liability
Except as otherwise required by law, in no event will we be liable for any damages other than actual damages arising in connection with Pay.gov, including without limitation indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages. In no event will we be liable for any failure of performance, error, computer virus or worm, omission, interruption, defect, delay in operation or transmission. We will have no liability for any act or omission of any third party (such as a provider of telecommunication services, Internet access, or computer equipment or software) or any circumstances beyond its control. In order to manage risk, Pay.gov may monitor transactions for fraud. We may reject a transaction for a higher than normal level of risk associated with the payment (for example and without limitation, a risk that the payment may be challenged to be unauthorized). This may be because Pay.gov has the reasonable suspicion that an account is or has been used for activities, including, but not limited to: reversals, chargebacks, disputes, claims, fees, fines, penalties, complaints or for other reasons as determined by us in our reasonable discretion. Such an action does not mean that parties to the transaction are acting in a dishonest or fraudulent manner. It means there may be a higher than normal level of risk associated with the payment. Except as otherwise required by law, WE DO NOT MAKE ANY WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED (INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE), WITH RESPECT TO ANY SOFTWARE, INFORMATION, SERVICE, OR OTHER ITEM PROVIDED BY, LOCATED ON, DERIVED FROM, ASSOCIATED WITH OR LINKED TO BY PAY.GOV. EVERYTHING IS PROVIDED "AS IS."
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Comments, Feedback, and Customer Service Questions
We welcome your comments, feedback, and Customer Service questions regarding Pay.gov. In this regard, we may in our discretion take full rights to make use of any ideas or suggestions you provide without giving compensation in return. For comments, feedback, and Customer Service inquiries, please Contact Us
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Online Forms
An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it provides notice of a currently valid Office of Management and Budget (OMB) control number. Among other things, a notice of the expected time burden is required.
As noted above, Pay.gov provides services to Federal agencies. These services include the posting of agency forms. Required notices that accompany these forms are the responsibility of those agencies.
For forms that are specific to Pay.gov in its own right, we estimate that it will take you no more than 30 minutes to fill out any such form, though most will only take a few minutes. This includes the time it will take to read any instructions, gather the necessary facts and fill out the form. If you have comments or feedback regarding the above estimate or ways to simplify our forms, please Contact Us
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Amendments
We may from time to time amend these notices and this agreement. Your continued use of Pay.gov on or after the effective date of any amendment evidences your agreement to the terms of that amendment.
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Miscellaneous
Any dispute arising under this Agreement will be dealt with under Federal law in the Federal courts of the District of Columbia, which is to be considered the place of transaction for all online transactions.
If any part of this agreement is determined to be invalid or unenforceable then the invalid or unenforceable provision will be deemed superseded by a valid, enforceable provision that most closely matches the intent of the original provision and the remainder of this agreement shall continue in effect.
This agreement constitutes the entire agreement between you and us with respect to the Pay.gov services and supersedes all prior or contemporaneous communications and proposals, wither electronic, oral or written, between you and with us with respect to the Pay.gov services.
A printed version of these notices and agreement given in electronic form shall be admissible in judicial or administrative proceedings based upon or relating to this agreement to the same extent and subject to the same conditions as other business documents and records originally generated and maintained in printed form.
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Financial Notices
Different payment methods can have different rules regarding unauthorized transactions. For instance: Credit card transactions can be reversed in many instances and your liability for unauthorized transactions generally cannot exceed $50.
Direct debit (Automated Clearing House debit) transactions also can be reversed in many instances, but your liability for unauthorized transactions can be higher than for credit card transactions, ranging up to a potentially unlimited amount, depending on when the unauthorized transaction(s) are reported to your financial institution.
Fedwire transactions can be treated as final.
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Definitions
Agency or Federal agency means any Federal agency, department, bureau, service, office, or other entity that uses Pay.gov services.
Pay.gov means the Government-wide Web transaction portal operated by the Fiscal Service of the United States Department of the Treasury, which may be accessed at: http://www.fiscal.treasury.gov
We or us or Our means the Fiscal Service and its agents and contractors acting within the scope of their responsibilities on the Pay.gov program.
You means you, the end-user making use of the Pay.gov services, in a a personal capacity, professional capacity (including on behalf of a business or other entity), or both.
Note:
The online texts of laws to which this page hyperlinks are not official texts and may be out of date or otherwise inaccurate. The official texts are published by the Government Printing Office (http://www.gpo.gov) -
Handling of sensitive data
This system may contain Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) data that requires specific data privacy handling requirements as dictated by law, mandate or government agency.
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