Open Financial Exchange (OFX) is a unified specification for the electronic exchange of financial data between financial institutions, businesses and consumers via the Internet.
Open Financial Exchange is a unified specification for the electronic exchange of financial data between financial institutions, businesses and consumers via the Internet. Created by CheckFree, Intuit and Microsoft in early 1997, Open Financial Exchange supports a wide range of financial activities including consumer and small business banking (also with image download and loan and amortization download), consumer and small business bill payment, bill presentment and investments, including stocks, bonds and mutual funds, and tax download. Other financial services, including financial planning and insurance, may be added in the future. Open Financial Exchange, which supports transactional Web sites, thin clients and personal financial management software, streamlines the process financial institutions need to connect to multiple customer interfaces, processors and systems integrators.
Open Financial Exchange is an Internet-oriented client-server system that features a direct connection between the client and a financial institution's server, employing a request/response model using XML. It features full data synchronization and complete error recovery. The standards-based specification incorporates widely accepted Internet transport and security protocols. The specification is freely licensed, allowing any software developer to design an interface that will be supported on the front-end.
The OFX Consortium welcomes input from all interested parties to extend the open standard. The standard is governed by a consortium of leading financial institutions and technology providers that discuss and vote on the advancements of OFX specifications.
The Open Financial Exchange specification is publicly available for implementation by any financial institution or vendor, and is available for review on this website. Open Financial Exchange is being used by CheckFree, Intuit, Microsoft and many others as the mechanism for supporting financial data exchange in their products and services.
