News

IFX Forum approves Version 1.5, reviews guidelines for ATMs

February 12, 2004

FALLS CHURCH, Va. - At its recent members meeting in Dallas, the Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX) Forumreviewed and ratified the latest version of the IFX specification, Version 1.5. The document is now available for download at no charge from the organization's Web site.

According to a news release, IFX Version 1.5 extends the ATM, POS, Business and Consumer Banking support provided by earlier releases of IFX. The result of several years of implementation experience in various commercial and retail banking applications, Version 1.5 builds on IFX's multi-channel capabilities to enable it to be used as a core technology for the EFT industry.

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The group also reviewed the ATM/POS Implementation Guide that will be released later this year. The current draft, designed to help business and technical personnel understand how to use IFX to implement all or part of an ATM/POS solution, was developed by the Forum's ATM/POS Working Group. The guide assists parties interested in building an interoperable software application for EFT processing, using the business messages of the Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) specification.

Work on IFX Version 2.0 also continued at the Dallas meeting. An adaptation of the IFX infrastructure to support emerging standards, Version 2.0 will be designed to support Web Services standards and will include changes flowing from the International Standards Team Harmonisation (ISTH) project. The Forum is seeking companies and individuals who have international payment requirements or are implementing service-oriented architectures to participate in building this next generation of the IFX standard.

The next members' meeting of the IFX Forum, a not-for-profit standards-developing organization working to develop a framework for the electronic business-to-business exchange of data among financial service institutions around the world, is scheduled to take place in London, April 26-30, 2004. Details will be available at the Web site.