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A trade group that is developing a new transaction-messaging standard based on extensible markup language (XML) for financial transactions says it is now turning its attention to point-of-sale payments. The Interactive Financial Exchange Forum, Falls Church, Va., released earlier this year a version of the Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) standard for ATMs, and now hopes to build on that work to create a standard for credit and debit card transactions at merchant locations as well as transactions at bank teller windows. The IFX standard seeks to use the Web-based XML protocol to ease the conversion of transactions across multiple banking channels, including electronic banking, ATMs, POS, and branches, so that transactions initiated in one channel could be viewed or processed in real time in another. The standard also purports to make it possible for processors and machine deployers to add new services without regard for proprietary vendor standards or the restrictions of existing messaging standards. The 7-year-old group, which boasts 28 members drawn from the ranks of vendors and financial institutions, relies on industry participation to develop IFX applications for specific transaction types, says Richard P. Urban, a consultant who serves as the forum's president. Banks, retailers, processors, and software companies hoping to influence an IFX standard for POS transactions, he says, may want to act now. “This is an opportune time to participate in creating a POS definition of the IFX standard,” he notes. “You'd have a solid basis with all the work that's been done with ATMs.” Possible functions the new standard could enable for POS, say some experts, include improved real-time fraud monitoring and prediction and easier migration to Internet Protocol (IP) connectivity, though Urban says the end result of the labors of the forum's ATM and POS Working Group, which was formed two and a half years ago and is responsible for drawing up the POS definition, is difficult to predict. The ATM specification, which covers a wide variety of machine functions, drew impetus from the steady replacement of ATMs running the older OS/2 operating standard from IBM Corp. by machines running on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows system. At the same time, says Urban, deployers are replacing ATMs with newer models to comply with the new triple DES security protocol mandated by the card networks. “Triple DES was driving [the working group],” he notes. Urban won't predict how long it will take the IFX standard to become dominant for ATMs, but with major vendors behind it, it looks set to make steady gains. Among the forum's members are Diebold Inc. and NCR Corp., which dominate the ATM business, as well as major switching-software firms including ACI Worldwide Inc. and eFunds Corp. Representatives from ACI and NCR chair the ATM/POS Working Group. Banks in the group include Bank of America Corp., Citibank N.A., and Wells Fargo Co. BofA is the nation's largest ATM deployer. The group has also developed an IFX specification for electronic banking and bill payment, and says its future releases of the standard will include specifications for person-to-person payments, prepaid phone recharge, and several check transactions.
