NEW ORLEANS -- A coalition of technology and financial services companies has introduced an open platform input/output standard designed to improve compatibility of hardware and software applications used in the banking and financial services industries.
Based on an open architecture Java technology platform, the Financial Device Interface for J/eXtensions for Financial Services (FDI for J/XFS) is a collaborative development by the J/XFS Forum, a group comprised of De La Rue, Diebold, IBM, NCR, Sun Microsystems and Wincor-Nixdorf. FDI for J/XFS documentation and object code is available on the Web free of charge at http://www.jxfs.com.
With FDI for J/XFS, peripheral devices such as ATMs, magnetic stripe readers, kiosks, printers, thin-clients and others will share a platform-independent computing language for enterprise-wide interoperability.
"With J/XFS we are able to realize the advantages of the Java platform for our banking applications, because this is an open, non-proprietary architecture and standard for accessing banking peripherals and is supported by major IT companies," said Walter Carels, head of development, Self Service Applications, KBC Belgium bank.
The companies of the J/XFS Forum have worked together since 1998 to develop a software standard for the Java platform. Hardware and software from these vendors will be among the first to include this new interface standard, though it is available to all vendors.
