How to Fill Out the Back of a Savings Bond to Cash It

To fill out the back of a savings bond, print your Social Security number and current mailing address inside the boxed “Request for Payment” area, then sign on the signature line. Use blue or black ink, print in block letters, and keep every character inside the printed borders. If the total value of the bonds you are cashing is more than $1,000, your signature has to be certified by a notary or other authorized officer before the Treasury or a bank will pay you.¹

What Goes in the Request for Payment Box

The back of every paper Series EE and Series I bond has a boxed section labeled “Request for Payment.” Two things go inside it:

Your Social Security number (or taxpayer identification number). The Treasury and your bank need it to report the interest you earned to the IRS.
Your current mailing address. This is where any check or tax form will be sent.

The owner or co-owner asking for payment also signs the request and lists their address.² Print clearly. If the Treasury cannot read what you wrote, payment can be delayed.

Do Not Sign Until You Are in Front of the Right Person

Whether you can sign at your kitchen table depends on how you plan to redeem the bond.

If you are taking the bond to a bank, wait. Sign in front of the teller or bank officer. A paying agent who receives a bond that has already been signed is allowed to make you sign it again before processing payment.² Signing early does not void the bond, but it creates a security risk if it goes missing before you get to the bank.

If you are mailing bonds to the Treasury, you sign FS Form 1522, not the back of the bond itself. The details of that form are covered further down.

Who Can Sign at All

Only certain people can request payment, depending on how the bond is registered:

Single ownership: the named owner signs.
Co-ownership: either co-owner can sign and cash the bond, and once one does, the other loses any interest in it.
Owner with beneficiary: the owner signs while alive. The beneficiary can only redeem after the owner dies, with proof of death.³

The $1,000 Rule for Signature Certification

Whether your signature needs to be certified turns on the total redemption value of what you are cashing in one transaction.

At $1,000 or less, no certification is required. You sign and provide a copy of a government-issued photo ID such as a driver’s license, passport, state ID, or military ID.

Above $1,000, you must sign in the presence of a notary public or another authorized certifying officer, who then verifies your identity and applies an official stamp or seal.¹ The threshold counts the combined value of every bond in the transaction, not each bond separately.

Who Counts as a Certifying Officer

Bank employees at authorized paying agents are the most common option, but federal rules also allow:

Any judge, clerk, or deputy clerk of a United States court.
Commissioned or warrant officers of the armed forces, but only for service members, their families, and civilian employees on military installations.
U.S. diplomatic or consular representatives, useful if you are abroad.
Notaries public, generally available in most communities and accepted on FS Form 1522.

If none of these officers is reasonably available, the Bureau of the Fiscal Service can make special arrangements.⁴ Whoever certifies must add their signature, title, seal or paying agent stamp, address, and the date.³

Cashing at a Bank

Call first. Banks vary on whether they cash savings bonds at all and on how much they will cash in one transaction.⁵ Bring the unsigned bond and a government photo ID. You will fill in the Request for Payment box and sign at the counter, and the bank will pay you the current redemption value at no charge.²

You cannot cash part of a paper bond. Each one has to be redeemed for its full value.⁵

Mailing Bonds to Treasury With FS Form 1522

If your bank will not cash the bond, or you would rather deal with the Treasury directly, you send the bonds in with FS Form 1522, downloadable from TreasuryDirect.gov. The form asks for the same information you would write on the bond: name, Social Security number, address, and signature, plus bank routing and account numbers for direct deposit.⁵

Leave the back of the bond itself blank when you mail it. Do the signing on the form. If the total is $1,000 or less, sign the form and enclose a copy of your photo ID. If the total is more than $1,000, sign the form in front of a notary or certifying officer and have them certify it.¹ Notary fees typically run from a few dollars up to about $25 per signature, depending on the state.

Send the completed form and the bonds to:

Treasury Retail Securities Services
P.O. Box 9150
Minneapolis, MN 55480-9150⁶

Use certified or registered mail. Bonds lost in transit without tracking take at least seven months to replace.⁶ Processing takes at least six weeks once the Treasury receives your package, and longer if the bonds are not in your name.

If the Bond Is in a Young Child’s Name

A parent can redeem a bond registered to a child who is too young to understand the transaction. Three things must all be true: you are the child’s parent, the child lives with you or you have legal custody, and the child is not old enough to understand the request for payment.⁷

Instead of the standard request for payment, write this on the back of the bond, filling in the blanks:

I certify that I am the parent of [child’s name]. [Child’s name] resides with me (or: I have been granted legal custody of [child’s name]). [He/She] is ___ years old and is not of sufficient understanding to make this request. [Child’s name] has the Social Security Number ___-__-____.

Then sign your own name “on behalf of [child’s name], a minor.”⁷

If the Owner Has Died

You cannot simply sign a deceased owner’s name on the back. What you do depends on the registration. A surviving co-owner cashes the bond directly with proof of death of the other co-owner. A named beneficiary redeems after providing proof of the owner’s death.³ If no co-owner or beneficiary is named, the bond belongs to the estate, and either the legal representative or, for smaller estates, a voluntary representative using FS Form 5336 handles the redemption.⁸

One Note on Timing

You cannot cash a savings bond until you have owned it for at least one year, and cashing before five years costs you the last three months of interest.⁵ The redemption value does not change between the first of one month and the first of the next, so the date you sign the back does not change what you get within a given month.

1
TreasuryDirect. FS Form 1522 – Special Form of Request for Payment
2
eCFR. 31 CFR 353.39 – Surrender for Payment
3
eCFR. 31 CFR Part 353 – Regulations Governing Definitive United States Savings Bonds, Series EE and HH
4
eCFR. 31 CFR 353.55 – Individuals Authorized to Certify
5
TreasuryDirect. Cashing EE or I Savings Bonds
6
TreasuryDirect. Contact Us
7
TreasuryDirect. Cashing Paper Bonds for a Young Child
8
TreasuryDirect. Non-Administered Estates