TreasuryDirect users now face ID.me as the sole online sign-in option, according to Biometric Update’s report, which says the change took effect October 28. Customers who do not create an ID.me account can continue using paper processes, but may lose online access to their Treasury securities accounts and tax documents.

The report says Senators Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren are asking Treasury and IRS officials to explain what “security, technical, capacity, fraud-prevention, or operational requirement” prevents Login.gov from serving major services that currently require ID.me. Their request is especially consequential because Treasury’s stated rationale for some earlier ID.me deployments was that Login.gov lacked a compliant Identity Assurance Level 2 offering.

That technical distinction has since changed. The Office of Management and Budget’s August 31 memorandum requires agencies to offer Login.gov for in-scope public-facing services and to use its identity-verification service when verification is required, unless the agency determines that Login.gov does not meet the service’s user, risk, or operational requirements. The memorandum also allows agencies to retain other systems for specific use cases Login.gov cannot fully meet or to avoid imposing additional burden on a significant population; agencies that cannot meet the offer-Login.gov requirement by the applicable deadline must submit a notice to OMB explaining why.

The resulting issue is not whether agencies can ever use another provider. It is whether Treasury has identified a current exception for TreasuryDirect. Biometric Update reports that Treasury says ID.me meets its security and fraud-prevention requirements but has not publicly identified a capability that Login.gov lacks. The same report says the senators are seeking clarification about possible biometric retention and one-to-many matching; it does not establish that those capabilities were authorized for TreasuryDirect.

For users, the immediate adoption constraint is a choice between creating an ID.me account for online access and relying on paper processes. For Treasury, the policy question is whether it can explain the service-specific conditions supporting ID.me while complying with the memorandum’s Login.gov requirements.