U.S Department of Veterans Affairs is Transitioning to Single Payment Bank Accounts

By April 20, 2024, you must have a single bank account for all VA benefit payments

Starting April 20, 2024, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will no longer send a Veteran’s or family members’ benefit payments to more than one bank account. VA is making this change to help protect Veterans and families from fraud and ensure that VA is able to pay Veterans on time, every time, without error.

This will require all Veterans and beneficiaries who receive GI bill payments and other benefit payments across multiple banking accounts to select one account by April 20, 2024. For example, if a Veteran receives GI Bill payments to one of their bank accounts and disability compensation payments to another, they will need to consolidate and select one account for all payments by April 20.

This shift is happening as a part of VA’s efforts to modernize the 50-year-old, antiquated GI bill payment system. Once fully deployed, the platform will improve claims processing and customer service by providing direct, online, one-stop access to GI Bill benefits and information.

This shift will impact nearly 50,000 of 800,000 total GI Bill beneficiaries. Fortunately, VA has all of the contact information for these Veterans, and VA has successfully managed many transitions like this in the past. In fact, VA has already transitioned all other VA benefits payments to one account – education programs are the remaining outliers.

VA will be aggressively reaching out to these students through text message, phone, and email on a weekly basis through April 20. They will continue to receive text messages and emails until they have updated their information in VA.gov. VA is also working with schools, Veterans Service Organizations, and other relevant parties to make sure that Veterans meet the deadline.

The easiest way for beneficiaries to make this change is to log on to Change Your VA Direct Deposit Information | Veterans Affairs. When beneficiaries get to the pay information, there will be a box for the bank account information of their education benefit, and a box for the bank account information for the other benefit they receive. The beneficiary should then update the bank account information to use the same account for all benefits.

Importantly, no Veteran will miss a benefits payment of any type. For any students who do not consolidate their bank accounts for benefits by April 20, VA will consolidate them on their behalf, electing their non-education benefit pay account as their primary bank account.