Published in PaymentsJournal on August 13, 2019 If you keep up with the payments industry, you’re bound to have heard about APIs. It seems like every day brings fresh articles covering the newest APIs in glowing terms. From improving digital banking to facilitating Same Day ACH payments, APIs are having a major impact on payments and the wider financial industry. But what are APIs and how exactly are they changing the payment ecosystem? APIs 101: a crash course on communication API stands for application programming interface.

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Nacha is leading the industry effort on API standardization. To accomplish this objective, Nacha supports Afinis Interoperability Standards, a membership-based governance organization that brings together diverse collaborators to develop implementable, interoperable, and portable financial services standards.

Afinis Interoperability Standards members will meet July 9-10 in Atlanta for a Program Increment (PI) Planning Meeting to review the group’s latest work efforts and identify new initiatives and goals for the second half of 2019.

First our salary is direct deposited, then we pull out our smartphone to pay bills. Who still writes a check? But while electronic payments have largely taken over among consumers, those pieces of paper still hold their own when it comes to business-to-business (B2B) payments. Strange as that might seem in 2019 there are valid reasons. B2B involves a lot more than “give me your bank account and routing numbers and we’re set.” Company A has this way of billing and receiving payments while Company B uses another system. And don’t even ask about Company C.

Afinis Interoperability Standards, a new member-led organization supported by NACHA, announced its inaugural Board of Directors and Board Officers. The Board of 10 members and three officers will guide the strategic direction of the organization, which is advancing financial industry standards, including API standardization and other financial services standards, across the U.S. and globally. 

Bill Sullivan, Nacha’s Head of Government & Industry Relations was back on Capitol Hill meeting with House and Senate staff with an eye towards the November mid-term elections. Meetings included a myriad of topics including, but not limited to, the API work of ASIG, the Alliance work on faster payments and the proof of concept work on B2B directories. November’s Congressional elections may bring changes to Senate Banking and House Financial Services Committee leadership.

Directory will leverage open source technology, blockchain and standardized APIs supported by NACHA’s API Standardization Industry Group to facilitate B2B electronic payments ROSEVILLE, Minn., Aug. 1, 2018 – The Business Payments Directory Association (BPDA) today announced that it will be partnering with Discover Financial Services (NYSE:DFS) to develop a proof of concept platform for its B2B Directory built on blockchain technology.

The report, RESTful Implementation of IFX Demonstration Design Review, concluded that: The IFX Standard and the IFX Message Framework are readily adaptable to REST design concepts. This paper describes many of the design decisions we have made and illustrates how to map the IFX Standard messages (methods) to RESTful concepts and HTTP verbs. IFX Objects can be implemented directly as JSON resources, but more work needs to be done for the purposes of APIs to define resources that are not as deeply nested as many of the structures currently defined in the specification. Read the Report