Pay.gov has been developed to meet the FMS commitment to process collections electronically using Internet technologies. Pay.gov satisfies agencies and consumers demands for electronic alternatives by providing the ability to complete forms, make payments and submit queries 24 hours a day electronically.

Launched in October 2000, Pay.gov is a secure government-wide collection portal. The application is web based allowing customers to access their accounts from any computer with Internet access. Pay.gov provides a suite of services allowing agencies to obtain and process collections in an efficient and timely manner. The Pay.gov application consists of four services: Collections (ACH and credit card), Forms, Billing, and Reporting.

Architecture and Security of Pay.gov environment

Pay.gov resides within the Treasury Web Applications Infrastructure (TWAI) - a highly secure environment provided by the Federal Reserve Information Technology (FRIT) to support several enterprise-wide Treasury applications. The TWAI is compliant with the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2. All communications between Pay.gov and agencies is conducted via dedicated lines, virtual private networks, or 128-bit, hardware-based (on Pay.gov's side), version 3-only Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption. The scripts used for invocation of the collections services require encryption, can provide for authentication of the agency, allow the agency to authenticate Pay.gov, and facilitate the handling of collection and reporting information.

Pay.gov has two locations within the TWAI - a production environment and a fully redundant, replicated secondary site for contingency purposes. A test environment is available for agencies to test their interface to Pay.gov, or their forms or bills, if hosted by Pay.gov. All connectivity to and from the TWAI is supported by TWAI system administrators. Pay.gov is supported by technicians and system administrators at TWAI.