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FINANCIAL INSTITUTONS AND IT vendors have wrapped up the final draft of Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX), a messaging specification envisioned as a single standard for online banking and bill presentment/payment applications.
The final draft, due for publication by early this month, caps off a process that began in March 1999 with the release of the initial IFX draft. After a public review period, the final draft will be published as a formal specification by the IFX Forum, the cross-indus- try group formed to develop and manage IFX.
The final IFX draft (available at www.ifxforum.org) includes a set of business messages, an XML protocol (which translates the business messages into XML tags) and a data dictionary (which defines all the data elements in the messages and their legal values). XML is a meta-language for creating interactive Web applications.
IFX stems from a multiyear effort by the Banking Industry Technology Secretariat (BITS)...