About EBICS in FEX

About EBICS

EBICS is a standard for electronic data interchange between corporates and banks. It was originally specified by the Zentraler Kreditausschuss (ZKA) operated by the central associations of the German banking industry.

The recent adoption of EBICS by the Comité Français d'Organisation et de Normalisation Bancaires (CFONB), the French national institution responsible for standards in banking activities, is a significant move towards joint payment instruments, standards and frameworks supporting the harmonization of national markets. SEPA provides a European-wide payments format. EBICS provides a common communication protocol with strong security features for payment transactions in wholesale banking.

EBICS version 2.4

EBICS version 2.4 offers technical solutions for certain French bank requirements, such as the enlargement of identification fields (customer ID, user ID and host ID) to 35 digits, as well as two new order types for uploading and downloading files. EBICS version 2.4 also describes the use of certificates.

EBICS version 2.5

EBICS Server and Electronic Signature embedded EBICS client now fully support version 2.5 of the EBICS protocol. For full details of the improvements of EBICS 2.5, refer to the official EBICS protocol specifications.

The most notable features of this protocol version are:

Server-generated order numbers: at each send operation, the order number formerly generated by the client-side is now generated by the server and returned to the client at the end of the transfer
The support of the H3K technical order type. This new order type is used for the initialization (in a similar way to INI and HIA) but allows the sending of the three certificates in just one operation. In order for this to work properly, the H3K send order type must be created manually in the EBICS Server UI and the customers that are to use it must be allowed for this order type.
Automatic release in the H3K case: when the H3K order type is used, the users are released automatically at the end of the initialization. This is different from the typical INI+HIA procedure that required a manual release in addition to the use of PDF letters and so on.

EBICS in FEX

FEX provides a means to implement EBICS exchanges from the corporate side and the bank side of an exchange.

Banks

For banking entities, Financial Exchange for Banks (FEX4B) provides a dedicated module to handle the EBICS protocol. Working from a dedicated UI, you can define the partners, security parameters, file types, and so on, that define the exchange agreements with your corporate clients.

You can define multiple instances of your banking entity, and define a virtually unlimited number of remote corporate partners.

For end-to-end monitoring, Financial Exchange for Banks includes the services of Sentinel.

Financial Exchange for Banks can communicate with any fully standardized EBICS corporate client application.

Corporates

For corporate entities, Financial Exchange for Corporates (FEX4C) provides a dedicated module to handle the EBICS protocol.

Financial Exchange for Corporates enables you to be linked to your back-end applications for dispatching and receiving EBICS exchanges from a corporate environment. For end-to-end monitoring, Financial Exchange for Corporates includes the services of Sentinel.

Financial Exchange for Corporates can communicate with any fully standardized EBICS banking server application.