The Future of Electronic Banking

SIZ is closely involved in the development of the EBICS, SEPA and FinTS (HBCI) electronic banking standards, and is well known for its outstanding expertise in the standardisation sector. 

2008 presented a double challenge to the German credit business and its IT service providers. As of January 28th, 2008, a voluntary commitment on the part of the EPC requires that banks must be able to exchange SEPA messages within their intercompany (bank/bank) payment transaction infrastructure. It is also recommended that the entire banking industry should employ the XML-based SEPA data format for the SEPA products used at the customer/bank interface.

Furthermore, the German banking industry’s central committee, the ZKA (Zentraler Kreditausschuss) has agreed to make an implementation of EBICS (the internet-based multi-bank standard for remote data transfer between customer and bank) mandatory on the part of all banks. EBICS (Electronic Banking Internet Communication Standard) was specified during the course of a ZKA project completed in 2005. In the online banking sector, updating the FinTS standard (the successor to HBCI) is one of the next major items on the agenda.