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IFX Forum Ready to Lead Collaboration on Remittance Standards

The objective of the workshop was to better understand issues and options for improving remittance data exchange and automated reconciliation of payments, especially in the United States. IFX Forum President Richard Urban addressed the participants concerning the Forum's activity in the area of remittance, both on its own and with respect to work on ISO 20022.

"The lively discussions at the workshop provided representatives of the IFX Forum and the other standards organizations in attendance a clear call to collaborate on the development of workable remittance standards," said Urban. "With our experience spearheading the ISTH harmonization effort that contributed a payment kernel to the ISO 20022 standard, as well as possessing the infrastructure that facilitated that work, the IFX Forum stands ready and willing to lead a new collaboration with other attendees, including NACHA, OAGI, SWIFT and X9. We invite other interested parties to join us as well."

The goal of the collaborative effort will be to develop a standard approach for electronic remittance delivery suitable for all sizes of businesses. The IFX Forum has created a special category of Advisory Membership for the purposes of this project; more information can be obtained by writing to info@ifxforum.org.

The workshop was held to discuss issues surrounding remittance information, which is data exchanged between trading partners to "explain" a payment. Corporations can be reluctant to adopt electronic payments and replace paper checks, in part because they have difficulty reconciling electronic payments due to insufficient remittance data, and a lack of remittance information standards contributes to the problem.

As a standards development organization, the IFX Forum offers particular strengths in the area of payments and remittance, including longtime liaison efforts with ISO and contributions to ISO 20022, and a recently announced collaborative effort with BIAN (the Banking Industry Architecture Network) focusing on interoperability in payment execution. More information can be found at http://www.ifxforum.org/action/.

About the IFX Forum

Founded in 1997, the Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX) Forum is an international not-for-profit industry association whose mission is to develop IFX and promote its adoption as an open, interoperable standard for financial data exchange, suitable for use by all sectors of the financial services industry. The IFX Forum also promotes interoperability of industry standards by working cooperatively with other standards organizations and consortia.

Forum membership is open to organizations interested in contributing to the development of open financial standards. Forum members include financial institutions, hardware, software and service firms, and related non-profit groups. The IFX Forum is currently organized into the following Working Groups: ATM/POS; Branch Banking Services; Business Banking; Card Management & Servicing, and Liaison & Interoperability. IFX Forum Working Groups, in concert with an Architecture Committee to coordinate their efforts, develop open Internet-compatible messages for all sectors of the financial services industry. To learn more about IFX Forum standards or the benefits of IFX Forum membership, please visit www.IFXForum.org.

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Virtual, Inc.
Judith Vanderkay, 781-876-6208
jvanderkay@virtualmgmt.com