Adopting the ISO 8583-1:2003 standard

Here’s something I wrote for a recent document:

In recent implementations, OLS has endeavored to move its APIs into frameworks that hew to the International Standards Organization ('ISO') 8583-1:2003 standard. [For reference, see the ISO 8583-1:2003 document entitled "Financial transaction card originated messages – Interchange message specifications – Part 1: Messages, data elements and code values."] As ISO 8583 is the prevailing standard used by institution-to-institution financial interchanges, adopting a similar approach for all "source stations" – be they local or network – establishes consistency and allows OLS to readily adopt and integrate workable, good practices wherever they may appear.

Most institutions are still on the 1987 standard; a couple have adopted the 1993 version (American Express springs to mind).  While not many have adopted 2003, we find it a good choice for our internal needs.  Alejandro is doing the same thing on his projects and projects.  In jCard, he uses ISO 8583-1:2003 as his Internal Message Format (“IMF”).

Comments

[Satish Inuganti]

The approach sounds very much like Base24 Architecture...

Way to go...

[Victor Salaman]

Well I think that if you were to redo your implementation you should consider the ISO8583-1:2003 spec as the basis for your IMF.

I know you already know the benefits of implementing your own internal spec. This reduces the effort of on-boarding a new interface, while eliminating action/response code mapping and all other nuissances (as the conversion from your IMF to the target spec is done externally from the core!)

So i think it's a good approach!