FALLS CHURCH, Va. - The IFX Forum has announced the official formation of a Branch Banking Services Working Group, following approval by the IFX Forum Steering Committee.
According to a news release, the IFX Forum is a non-profit standards-developing organization working to develop a robust framework for the electronic business-to-business exchange of data among financial service institutions around the world.
The new working group, is led by Karin Brown, senior product manager at ACI Worldwide, Inc. Rossana Funte, advisory developer at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), is chartered to extend the existing IFX Business Message System (BMS) to perform transactions through the bank branch delivery channel.
The group intends to incorporate enough functionality to support commonly used teller and call-center transactions in the next available release (likely version 2.0) of the IFX BMS.
In addition to the IFX BMS modifications, the group plans to develop an IFX Branch Banking Implementation Guide to describe usage and message flows. More complex functionality, including branch platform transactions, will be added to the IFX BMS in later releases.
"By adding branch functionality to the IFX BMS, the IFX Forum is addressing yet another financial institution service delivery channel, which broadens the opportunities for organizations to standardize their electronic transaction processing," said Richard P. Urban, president of the IFX Forum. "The enhanced IFX message specification can be leveraged by the entire branch delivery channel. We feel confident that we'll see many new implementations of IFX resulting from this reach into branch banking services."
The planned Branch Banking Services efforts are analogous to the activities of the ATM/POS Working Group, which developed functionality to support standardized electronic transaction messaging for ATMs and POS terminals in the IFX specification. The ATM/POS Working Group issued a detailed Implementation Guide in spring of 2004, which is available for free download from the IFX Forum Web site
The new Branch Banking Services Working Group will have its first face-to-face meeting on Oct. 25 during the upcoming IFX Membership meeting in Miami, Oct. 25-28. As is the IFX Forum's custom, prospective members are invited to attend this meeting free of charge, to become familiar with the group's activities before formally joining.
Advance meeting registration is required by Oct. 20; go to www.ifxforum.org for details, or contact LeAnn Wilson at info@ifxforum.org.
