Home » News » Press Releases » Press Release

Press Release

IFX FORUM AND BIAN COLLABORATE ON INTEROPERABILITY PROOF-OF-CONCEPT PROJECT

Joint Working Group Will Focus Initially on "Payment Execution" and "Manage Party"

WAKEFIELD, Mass., USA – June 7, 2011 – The Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX) Forum today announced a collaborative effort with BIAN (the Banking Industry Architecture Network; www.bian.org/content/). The locus for the effort within the IFX Forum is its recently launched Liaison and Interoperability Working Group (LIWG), which is chartered to be a center of expertise within the IFX Forum for interoperability with external standards and communications with organizations that develop them.

The IFX Forum is an international non-profit industry association whose mission is to develop and promote the adoption of its open, interoperable standard for financial data exchange, IFX, which is available at no charge at www.bms.ifxforum.org/. BIAN, an international community of leading banks and partners, was created to establish and promote a common framework for resolving banking interoperability issues, with an emphasis on service-oriented architectures (SOA).

The initial activity of the LIWG will be an interoperability Proof of Concept using IFX messaging and BIAN service definitions for Payment Execution and Manage Party (previously called Business Partner), with several objectives. One common objective is to show that a standard such as BIAN's for defining service boundaries can be implemented in practice with a standard messaging and data framework such as IFX. The Working Group expects to produce reports and white papers illustrating its findings, with the intention of presenting those findings at the SIBOS event in Toronto this fall.

"IFX has always had a service-oriented approach. We look forward to combining our expertise with that of the members of BIAN to demonstrate true standards interoperability and the practical use of SOA in the banking industry," said Richard P. Urban, President of the IFX Forum, and Co-Chair of the LIWG. "Our work with BIAN will prove both the viability of standards for the industry and the extraordinary value that can be achieved when Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) work together."

"With the worldwide trend toward banking standards adoption, the time is right for efforts to ensure interoperability between IFX, ISO 20022, and other relevant standards," said Steve van Wyk, CIO of ING Bank and Chairman of the BIAN Board of Directors.

The collaborative efforts take place via teleconference/web conference on a regular schedule, and recently with a face-to-face meeting of the LIWG at the IFX Forum's 2011 Annual Meeting, held May 2-4 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA, hosted by ACI Worldwide.

About the IFX Forum
Founded in 1997, the Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX) Forum is an international not-for-profit industry association whose mission is to develop IFX and promote its adoption as an open, interoperable standard for financial data exchange, suitable for use by all sectors of the financial services industry. The IFX Forum also promotes interoperability of industry standards by working cooperatively with other standards organizations and consortia.

Forum membership is open to organizations interested in contributing to the development of open financial standards. Forum members include financial institutions, hardware, software and service firms, and related non-profit groups. The IFX Forum is currently organized into the following Working Groups: ATM/POS; Branch Banking Services; Business Banking; Card Management & Servicing, and Liaison & Interoperability. IFX Forum Working Groups, in concert with an Architecture Committee to coordinate their efforts, develop open Internet-compatible messages for all sectors of the financial services industry. To learn more about IFX Forum standards or the benefits of IFX Forum membership, please visit www.IFXForum.org.

###

See this press release on a social media/sharing platform at http://pitch.pe/151391.