The Secretary of State for Tax Affairs, António Mendonça Mendes, has said this Monday that the Finance Department has already paid one million checks for 125 euros, adding that the process is proceeding "normally". There are, however, cases where the payment was returned due to the IBAN being incorrect and the Government calls on taxpayers to update this on the Finance Portal.

"The payments are proceeding with the normality that we expected and with the efficiency similar to that of the IRS refunds. At this moment, we have already managed to place one million payments and what we have verified is that there are some taxpayers who do not have the IBAN updated and that, due to this circumstance, the payment has been returned", said Mendonça Mendes, in statements to RTP3.

"We have already found about 200,000 taxpayers to whom the transfer was made and it was returned because the IBAN was incorrect. What people should do is consult the Finance Portal in their area" and "update this IBAN, because next month we will return to make the transfer and if the IBAN is already updated, the transfer will be carried out", explained the Secretary of State.

Mendonça Mendes also added that "every month we will run the database again to try to make the payment that we were unable to make the first time" and added: "We will do that in the next six months".