Adoption of ISO 20022 Messages by IFX Forum
The Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX) Forum was formed in 1997 to create a messaging standard for financial services that would address the challenges faced with the network-based computing models. Based on the work previously done by the Open Financial eXchange (OFX) and IBM/Integrion GOLD standard, the Forum proceeded to re-invest all of the knowledge gained from those standards to design a new generation XML standard that would be usable in many types of environments, extensible to cover many types of financial transactions, and globally aware, in recognition of the increased need to communicate around the world.
The Business Banking Work Group of IFX identified that financial institutions and their banking partners are looking to implement XML-based solutions to address the complexities of corporate banking needs while also taking advantage of all of the benefits that network environments offer. The messages are designed to be used across various types of applications – from internal systems of business banking data to data integration – across many companies by automatically integrating data from trading partners into enterprise systems.
In 2003, banks and enterprise software vendors were in a quandary as to which XML standard both organisations should allocate project funding. The focus of a project would be on enabling integration between bank services and products and the functionality in enterprise software that customers are using for day-to-day transaction and cash management activities. As several XML standards already provided an end-to-end solution, a memorandum of understanding was executed between four organisations to bring their subject matter experts together to define common messages for payments and cash management reporting messages. This group, composed of representatives from IFX, SWIFT, TWIST and OAGi, received the name of International Standards Team Harmonisation (ISTH).
In order to start the work of harmonising, IFX prepared a comparison between the messages supported by all four groups. Commonality was found extensively across all of the standards, with some standards containing a more detailed data solution than others. The culmination of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of man-hours resulted in the XML messages known today as ISO 20022 Universal Financial Industry (UNIFI) message schemes for payments and cash management. These messages are:
IFX was the first of the four standards organisations to incorporate the ISO 20022 messages into the request/response architecture that is the heart of the IFX standard. New IFX messages were defined that would allow the ISO 20022 message to sit inside of the IFX message architecture, irrespective of the version of the ISO 20022 message. As an example, a single message was created, Payment Batch Add Request, which could include either the Customer Credit Transfer Initiation or Customer Direct Debit Initiation. This was accomplished by including a name space that referenced the ISO 20022 schemas. As originators may desire to send detailed remittance information to their vendors, the message also accommodates the ability to include the IFX Remittance Information aggregate, where line item remittance details can be shown.
This approach taken by IFX allows a request and response service to be established, supporting either a batch or interactive style of communication. The IFX framework provides features and benefits such as:
With the inclusion of the ISO 20022 messages within the IFX framework, the data syntax and message structure can be utilised across multiple environments within an organisation – interactively when a request/response environment is necessary and in a push/pull infrastructure for automated message or file interfaces.