HERNDON, Va., March 19, 2020 – Nacha’s Afinis Interoperability Standards membership organization announced today it has partnered with XMLdation to enable its stakeholders to leverage the Finland-based company’s testing capabilities within Afinis’ developer portal.

Afinis focuses on the rapid delivery of APIs and other financial services standards across the U.S. and globally, using innovative and agile processes. The group’s developer portal at Afinis.org contains its API standards, and now includes the capability for immediate testing, which is powered by XMLdation.

Afinis brings diverse collaborators together to build and test solutions, develop implementable and portable standards, and provide thought leadership on the shared goals of advancing efficiency, surety and security, and interoperability for financial services. The group and its members work to not only identify and bring to market the APIs the industry needs to streamline processes and support innovation, but also to encourage and support adoption of standardized APIs to ensure the industry can reap their full benefits.

“One of the key measures of a successful standard is adoption in the industry, and Afinis wants developers in the industry to get a firsthand look at how Afinis APIs are defined to facilitate and speed up adoption,” said George Throckmorton, Executive Director of Afinis Interoperability Standards.

“Our partnership with XMLdation enables stakeholders to review Afinis API standard documentation, and gives them a tool to easily learn how the APIs should behave in real life. This will speed up the work of any developer looking to implement these kinds of APIs,” Throckmorton said.

“In defining standards and getting them adopted by the industry, collaboration is essential. Afinis has placed a huge emphasis on making the standards not only readable, but actionable. This enables banks in the U.S. to implement uniform payments APIs,” said Jarkko Leppälahti, CEO of XMLdation.

“This, in turn, will facilitate banks, fintechs and other enterprises to use standardized Afinis APIs in an easier manner, resulting in cost savings and better customer experience for payments. We at XMLdation have been very impressed by the approach Afinis has taken in their standardization effort. Not only do they leverage the most up-to-date technology approaches to make it easy for its members to adopt the standard, they also work hard to align their work with the key international standardization effort in payments, ISO 20022. After all, payments is a global industry,” Leppälahti said.

Afinis membership is open to all organizations interested in the development of API standardization, regardless of size, type or location. Presently, member organizations are furthering work on advancing use of recently released API use cases and those set for release in the near term.

To join or learn more about how Afinis is advancing API standardization to enhance the efficiency and security of today’s modern financial industry, visit afinis.org.

About Afinis Interoperability Standards

Afinis is a membership-based governance organization supported by Nacha that brings together diverse collaborators – through innovative and agile processes – to develop implementable, interoperable, and portable financial services standards across operating environments and platforms. Afinis brings together thought leaders and leading technologists from financial institutions, fintechs and solution providers, businesses, governments, and nonprofit organizations to rapidly develop API products through use of Afinis’ platform for standardized API product discovery, application testing, and developer collaboration. For more information and to learn how to join, visit Afinis.

About Nacha

Nacha is a nonprofit organization that convenes hundreds of diverse organizations to enhance and enable ACH payments and financial data exchange within the U.S. and across geographies. Through the development of rules, standards, governance, education, advocacy, and in support of innovation, Nacha’s efforts benefit all stakeholders. Nacha is the steward of the ACH Network, a payment system that universally connects all U.S. bank accounts and facilitates the movement of money and information. In 2019, 24.7 billion payments and nearly $56 trillion in value moved across the ACH Network. Nacha also leads groups focused on API standardization and B2B payment enablement. Visit Nacha.org for more information, and connect with us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

About XMLdation

XMLdation is a world leader in financial messaging and APIs, covering standards such as ISO 20022, Nacha ACH, SWIFT MT, EDI 820 as well as proprietary payments formats. XMLdation sandbox solutions are used by bank clients as they onboard to batch file payments services, and by software vendors as they onboard to bank APIs. Visit xmldation.com for more information.