Technology and banks are struggling to control and standardise the development of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that are transforming the financial world. The announcement that the IFX Forum, a successfully developer of financial standards, today is to be welcomed. They revealed the roster of member companies anchoring its newly launched Open APIs Working Group, include ACI Worldwide, NCR, Oracle, Tata Consultancy Services, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo 

Strategic priority

In keeping with its core mission, the IFX Forum recently established a strategic priority around the creation of industry-wide standard open APIs. The Open APIs WG is working to develop a standardised way to address the growing impetus for banks to provide more open access to their data, in place of proprietary APIs being developed by financial institutions and vendors. 

The inaugural face-to-face meeting of the Working Group is taking place May 2-3 in Orlando, Florida, USA, during the Forum's 2017 Annual Meeting, hosted by Oracle. "The commitment from these leading multinational companies to our Open APIs initiative underscores the importance of this effort to the global financial services industry. Their expertise and resources will enable the Working Group to deliver significant results in a timely manner," said IFX Forum President Richard Urban. "I urge everyone who has a stake in providing safe, efficient open access to banking data to join us in Orlando, to learn what the IFX Forum and its member community are doing, and how you can participate."

The anchor members comments included:

• "It's a pivotal time for banking standards evolution; regulatory intervention like the Payment Services Directive in Europe creates new market participants, indirect access methods, and connections. Moving our industry toward a standard for APIs is something for which everyone in our ecosystem should strive. It will open the door to even greater innovation in the banking and payments world, and enable the best ideas to rise to the top, which in the end is what we all want." Mandy Killam, Executive Vice President, ACI On-Premise, ACI Worldwide
• "As a founding member of the IFX Forum and an active participant in the development of IFX Business Message Specification, Wells Fargo is excited about the advancement of this body of work in open standards and its adoption as JSON/REST-based APIs and micro-services through the IFX API Work Group. The increasing global demand for faster payments and regulatory requirements around such payments drives the need for safe and efficient exchange of customer and account information between third-party providers and trusted partners." Mark A. Schaffer, Vice President and Systems Architect, Wells Fargo Wholesale Banking Technology.

New members

The Forum welcomes additional members to join in all its activities. More information can be found at http://www.ifxforum.org/join/. The Forum also hosts a free IFX Discussion Forum, where knowledgeable Forum members and other subject matter experts will answer IFX-related questions from the public.

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CTMfile take: But will development be fast enough to keep up with the fintechs?