Background

IFX for Business Banking is designed to be used across various types of applications - from internal systems communications of business banking data to data integration across many companies by automatically integrating data from trading partners into internal enterprise systems.

Ultimately, the goal of the IFX for Business Banking service is to create a standard that will allow companies to interact more effectively with each other and accomplish end-to- end e-commerce.

Why XML and IFX?
XML is a format for defining, transmitting, validating and interpreting data over the Internet between applications and between organizations, and is widely viewed as the leading data exchange technology for e-commerce. XML makes it easier for companies to integrate data from business partners into their back-end systems because, in addition to structuring data -- i.e., telling what the content is and what role the content plays, such as whether it's a heading, a footnote or just data -- XML "tags" tell a user how data is organized and how to read the information in the file.

However, XML alone only provides the grammar rules for communication. The building blocks to rich transactional conversations are provided through the business message sets that have been defined in IFX. The IFX for Business Banking service was built by leading financial institutions and trading partners, working together to create a useful set of elements that encompass a wide variety of traditional business banking rules.

Addressing the Complexity of Corporate Banking Needs
The required business rules that support the banking needs of corporate customers can be highly complex and encompass detailed processing rules that are just not seen in a consumer based banking model. Requirements to support features such as multiple payments with multiple due dates being applied to single invoices and all of the possible permutations thereof are more the norm than the exception.

With the use of the IFX Business Banking service, the ability to translate such complexities in an XML-based format is central to creating a useful, reliable communication mechanism. Some of the uses of IFX for Business Banking include:

• The ability to transmit documents and information over the Internet more easily and with less intervention or reformatting than required today.
• Usage of standard formats for banking transactions utilized in the business/corporate day-to-day operations.
• The ability to exchange payment instructions, bank confirmations, bank statements, receipts information, and account reconciliation documents with banking partners and/or between organizations.
• Automatically update internal systems with the XML-formatted data in any of these documents.

Integrated Support for Retail and Wholesale Banking
Additionally, the IFX specification allows for optional integration of Retail and Wholesale banking services. IFX provides a wide range of retail banking features that can easily be integrated with banking applications that require support for both. This is particularly useful in inter-bank transactions, record keeping and data transmission.

Integrated with the Rest of IFX
The Business Banking service is integrated into the IFX Framework - the foundation of the IFX Specification includes a set of common objects that can be used across multiple types of financial services. This facilitates the implementation of cross service applications.

For example, with a common definition for a "customer" that is used across multiple services, multiple types of applications can leverage off of one standard to utilize that piece of data. A financial institution that wishes to offer seemingly disparate services (such as banking and insurance) that may be located in different business units can take advantage of the common object definition to unify the disparate systems.

IFX for Business Banking – Features and Benefits
 

* As of Version 1.3 due out in April, 2002

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