Afinis Enables Payments API Standardization Testing

Nacha-owned membership organization Afinis Interoperability Standards is teaming up with Findland-based XMLdation to automate application programming interface (API) standardization in the payments space, Nacha announced.

The partnership will give Nacha investors the opportunity to capitalize on XMLdation’s testing capabilities using the Afinis developer portal.

As a membership-based standards organization, Afinis connects diverse collaborators throughout the U.S. and abroad using state-of-the-art agile processes. The partnerships work together to build and test solutions.

The Afinis.org developer portal centers on its API standards. The partnership with XMLdation gives the portal immediate testing capabilities.

“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,” George Throckmorton, executive director of Afinis Interoperability Standards, said in a March 18 statement.

“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 added.

Afinis and its members collaborate to deliver APIs necessary to make processes more efficient, encourage further development and advance API standardization. 

“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.

Legacy banks and traditional financial institutions are quickly stepping up the move into the open banking and application programming interface spaces with a true sense of urgency and purpose.