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IFX FORUM ISSUES EXTENSIVE ATM/POS IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE
Guide To Be Featured at London Annual Meeting, April 26-30
The Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX) Forum has published a comprehensive ATM/POS Implementation Guide, designed to help business and technical personnel understand how to use IFX to implement all or part of an ATM/POS solution. The Guide, which has more than 400 pages, will be highlighted at the Forum's Annual Meeting, which is taking place next week in London; all current and prospective Forum members are invited to attend. Starting Thursday, April 22, the Guide will be available at no charge via download from the IFX Forum's Web site, www.ifxforum.org.
[NOTE: the ATM/POS Guide is no longer available to non-members without charge.]
The IFX Forum is a not-for-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 current version of its IFX specification, Version 1.5, can be downloaded free of charge from the Forum's Web site.
The ATM/POS (Automated Teller Machine/Point of Service) Implementation Guide is the culmination of nearly two years of dedicated work by the Forum's ATM/POS Working Group, which is chaired by Kendall Draeger of NCR Corporation. The Guide, which includes relevant use case scenarios, is intended to help business and technical personnel understand how to use IFX to implement all or part of an ATM/POS solution. It further explains how to utilize the IFX business messages to communicate information between the parties participating in EFT services.
"The ATM/POS Working Group has supplied modifications already incorporated into the IFX specification that focus on the development of business messages to enable an open, interoperable framework for EFT and related processing," said Richard P. Urban, IFX Forum President. "This working group has thoroughly explored the issues involved in enabling interoperability among transaction generating devices and transaction acquiring systems, and the new Guide is the result."
Many of today's ATM and POS environments use proprietary message formats, which can hinder interoperation with other institutions' systems, or at best require additional work to make "conversations" between systems effective (until the next software upgrade occurs). By comparison, standardizing on IFX as a business message specification eliminates the problems with proprietary message formats from ATMs or POS devices.
Additional benefits of using IFX include a more competitive vendor marketplace, because vendors can concentrate on their true competitive differentiators; easier integration with other channels and systems; and more detailed network management information. The new Guide will help any implementing companies realize these benefits.
"A particularly helpful feature of our Guide is its clarity for showing how to use IFX messages for necessary ATM/POS transactions," said Draeger. "The members of the Working Group spent hundreds of hours writing this comprehensive Guide. I encourage everyone in the global ATM/POS sector to download and use the Guide."
Following is the Table of Contents of the IFX Forum's ATM/POS Implementation Guide:
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Basic IFX Concepts
Chapter 3 Overview of Service Provider Roles and Communications
Chapter 4 Data Structures and Relationships
Chapter 5 The Essential ATM/POS Activities
Chapter 6 IFX to ISO Integration
Chapter 7 Message Summary
Chapter 8 Startup Processing and Signon
Chapter 9 Identifying a Customer
Chapter 10 Withdrawal Transactions
Chapter 11 Balance Inquiry
Chapter 12 Funds Transfer
Chapter 13 Deposit Transactions
Chapter 14 Payment Enclosed Transactions
Chapter 15 Payment by Transfer Transactions
Chapter 16 Statement Print Transaction
Chapter 17 Purchase from ATM Transactions
Chapter 18 PIN Change Transactions
Chapter 19 Fee Transactions
Chapter 20 Security
Chapter 21 Terminal Open/Close
Chapter 22 Device Statuses
Chapter 23 Balancing and Replenishment Transactions
Chapter 24 ATM/POS Solutions - FAQ
About the Annual Meeting As is the Forum's custom, prospective members are invited to attend the London meeting, to become familiar with the group's activities before formally joining. A special feature for this event will be a half-day educational seminar, open to all at no charge, on the IFX Forum and the IFX Business Message Specification – an ideal opportunity to learn about the mission of the IFX Forum and the underlying design of the standard. Although there is no fee to participate in the seminar or the meeting itself, all attendees must register online or via email by April 21: go to www.ifxforum.org for details, or contact LeAnn Wilson at info@ifxforum.org.
About the IFX Forum Membership in the IFX Forum is open to anyone interested in contributing to the development of open financial standards that harness the power of XML. The IFX Forum is currently organized into the following Working Groups: ATM/POS; Business Banking; Electronic Bill Presentment & Payment; and Web Services. 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.
For additional information:
email info@ifxforum.org
Phone: +1 (781) 876-8811
Fax: +1 (781) 224-1239
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