News
Forum hopes to help ATMs speak same language
A working group of the Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) Forum wants to help all ATMs and POS devices speak the same software language to make it easier for deployers to offer new functionality.
July 17, 2002
Reprinted with permission from ATM&Debit News, a weekly electronic newsletter based in Chicago. Subscriptions available at 212-631-9780 or go to thisWeb site.
Transaction authorization and messaging software residing inside ATMs typically use proprietary programming language. And this is causing difficulty for bank deployers that want their Web-enabled ATMs to use the same language as their Internet banking sites so they can offer similar products.
The new ATM and Point-Of-Sale Working Group of the Interactive Financial Exchange Forum, however, hopes to resolve such problems through the development and support of a nonproprietary messaging standard that will make the machines much easier to plug into Web-based products, promotions and services.
The IFX Forum is composed of financial-industry leaders, including rival bank ATM suppliers, Dayton, Ohio-based NCR Corp. and North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold Inc., and the nation's largest ATM processing-software vendor, Omaha, Neb.-based ACI Worldwide.
IFX Forum members ACI Worldwide IBM |
The IFX standard is a common set of protocols designed for use in software written for Internet-based financial-service sites. Bank officials hope that creating an IFX standard for ATM-messaging software and back-end EFT transaction-authorization systems will simplify their ability to use ATMs for a variety of services and promotions, says Stephen Risto, director of NCR's Aptra software product in the Americas.
Use of the IFX standard-messaging protocols for ATM software would allow banks to display similar messages and sell products on their ATMs as they do on their Internet banking sites, regardless of ATM brand or software used as long as it is built around the IFX standard, Risto notes. "It enables banks to collapse their systems," he says. "They would not have to build separate infrastructures for each of these channels."
The results of a recent survey by Boston-based Celent Communications show that there currently are fewer than 2,500 ATMs in the U.S. that offer products using Web-based technology. James W. D'Aprile, vice president of self-service ATM banking at Boston-based FleetBoston, which has about 3,800 ATMs, plans to roll out a Web-enabled ATM program in the near future.
D'Aprile has advised the IFX Forum about the importance of standardizing message protocols on ATMs. He says offering the same kinds of products on ATMs as banks now offer on Internet-banking sites, such as bill payment, is difficult because of the current proprietary nature of ATM-driving software.
Developing standard protocols across vendor lines for transaction-authorization software would lead to significant advancements in offering products such as bill payment on ATMs, says D'Aprile.
NCR hopes to offer an IFX-based module for use with its Aptra ATM software, which currently uses NCR's NDC+ proprietary messaging protocols, by the end of the year, says Risto.
ACI Worldwide also plans to offer an IFX module for its Base24 bank authorization processing software, says Rick Duvall, ACI product manager. "Most of us are looking for this (IFX standard) to be available early in 2003," he says.
Diebold also is working toward offering software upgrades that will enable its 911/912 ATM software to run software written with a new ATM-based IFX messaging standard. "We are moving into a world of open systems, and one area where open systems have not been addressed is at the ATM," says Bruce Chapa, Diebold senior product manager.
Chapa likens today's ATM environment to the personal-computer environment before widespread use of the HTML and XML standardized messaging languages for home-based PCs connected to the Internet.
Currently, banks and other deployers face a complicated and expensive process to convert their ATMs for use with newer, multifunction payment platforms. This includes using an ATM for traditional access to demand-deposit accounts and for the routing of a payment transaction stemming from the purchase of a product, such as prepaid cellular phone time. "The ATM is then no longer talking to a single authorization point at banks," notes Chapa.
Adopting a single messaging standard may mean that software companies will compete more aggressively with ATM producers in the ATM-messaging software arena. But ATM buyers are demanding a more open and simplified standard for linking their machines to other commercial channels so they can be a relevant banking channel in the future, Duvall notes. "There are banks that say, 'I want the same graphics and commercials on my ATMs that I have on my Web sites,'" Duvall says.
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