NACHA and IFX Forum Announce Intent to Combine

HERNDON, Va., Feb. 28, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- NACHA—The Electronic Payments Association® and the Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX) Forum today jointly announced their intention to pursue a strategic combination of their organizations to accelerate and strengthen the development of standardized Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) in support of the diverse global financial services industry.

NACHA and IFX Forum see great value in aligning the API development priorities of both NACHA's API Standardization Industry Group (ASIG) and the IFX Open Banking APIs Working Group. The complementary work of these two groups enables a natural and timely alignment that is beneficial for all industry stakeholders. IFX Forum will retain its global and non-profit status, and operate as an independent group within and supported by NACHA, with its own governing board. Finalization of the combination is planned to occur at the end of the first quarter of 2018.

"The powerful combination of IFX Forum's established leadership in financial industry standards, along with additional technical expertise in the area of API message development, and NACHA's leadership in payment and adjacent standards will accelerate this innovation," said NACHA President and CEO Janet O. Estep. "The organizations will be able to build relevant standards in existing and new business domains."

"Both organizations share common interests," said IFX Forum President Richard Urban. "The IFX Forum and NACHA combination will enable natural and timely alignment that is synergistic and healthy for all members from a technical and business perspective."

Download the NACHA/IFX Media Kit.

About NACHA—The Electronic Payments Association
NACHA—The Electronic Payments Association is the steward of the ACH Network – one of the largest, safest and most reliable payment systems in the world. The ACH Network creates value and enables innovation by universally connecting all U.S. financial institutions, and moving money and information directly from one bank account to another. NACHA also brings together diverse organizations to develop rules and standards to benefit payments ecosystem participants, including Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) and healthcare Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). By collaborating with other standards organizations and geographies, NACHA facilitates compatibility and integration with U.S. payments. Visit nacha.org for more information.

About the IFX Forum
The Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX) Forum is an international not-for-profit industry association whose mission is to develop the IFX business message specification and promote its adoption as an open, interoperable standard for financial data exchange. IFX is available at no charge at http://bms.ifxforum.org/. An agile standards development organization (SDO), the IFX Forum also promotes interoperability of industry standards by working cooperatively with other standards groups.

IFX is broadly used in practical implementations across the financial services industry, and is especially suited for financial institutions using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). IFX contains thousands of data elements and hundreds of messages specifically designed for the financial services industry by industry experts. The standard is ideal for modern API-enabled deployments.

More information about IFX and the benefits of IFX Forum membership can be found at www.IFXForum.org.

About the API Standardization Industry Group (ASIG)
ASIG is comprised of more than 100 leading organizations from financial institutions, fintechs, businesses, service providers, standards organizations and others, all of whom have a desire to further efforts to standardize the use of APIs in the U.S. and leverage global standards efforts such as ISO 20022, when possible. ASIG has identified 16 API use cases that will have an immediate impact on the financial services industry and payments ecosystem. ASIG is sponsored by NACHA's Payments Innovation Alliance. For more information or to join, visit https://www.nacha.org/content/api-standardization-industry-group.

SOURCE NACHA - The Electronic Payments Association

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