NACHA — The Electronic Payments Association and the InteractiveFinancial eXchange (IFX) Forum plan to combine forces in a dealthey said will speed up and strengthen the development ofstandardized application programming interfaces (APIs) in the financial services industry,according to an announcement today.

The IFX Forum will remain a nonprofit and become an independentgroup inside of NACHA, the groups said. The merger is slated tobecome final at the end of March.

“The powerful combination of IFX Forum's established leadershipin financial industry standards, along with additional technicalexpertise in the area of API message development, and NACHA'sleadership in payment and adjacent standards will accelerate thisinnovation,” NACHA President and CEO Janet Estep said. “Theorganizations will be able to build relevant standards in existingand new business domains.”

NACHA is a nonprofit association that oversees the ACH networkand is active in the payments industry. The IFX Forum is a globalnonprofit association that helps develop standards for financialdata exchange. It has been working to develop a standardized way tofor credit unions and other financial institutions to provide moreopen access to their data instead of relying on proprietary APIsfrom financial institutions and vendors.

APIs help different software, hardware and systems talk to eachother.

This latest deal will line up API development at NACHA's APIStandardization Industry Group (ASIG) with the IFX Open BankingAPIs Working Group, according to the announcement.

“Both organizations share common interests,” IFX Forum PresidentRichard Urban added. “The IFX Forum and NACHA combination willenable natural and timely alignment that is synergistic and healthyfor all members from a technical and business perspective.”

NACHA has been active in the API standardization field. OnJanuary 30 of this year, it announced it was collaborating withAccenture to create and launch a microsite and developer portal tosupport API standardization across the payments world.

“Implementing standardized APIs is increasingly important forU.S. financial services firms as they strive to provide superiordigital experiences and tailored customer offerings faster and moreefficiently,” the organization said at the time.

NACHA is also in the midst of implementing same-day ACH. Thethird and final phase of that transition takes effect on March 16.Beginning on that date, financial institutions must make mostsame-day ACH credits available to customers and members by 5 p.m.local time.