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In 1995 the
German banks represented by their associations participating in The
German Banking Industry (DK, former ZKA) announced a common online banking standard called:
"Homebanking Computer Interface (HBCI)".
This
standard was created for bank customers and manufacturers of banking
products (PFMs) for the communication with their banks (multibanking
support). In the following years the standard has
steadily been improved in many ways, mainly in the security area to
meet the araising requirements. With the
creation of new and attractive business transactions the functionality
of the client products grew accordingly.
In 2003 the
DK announced the next generation of the well established standard: FinTS (Financial
Transaction Services) with the definition of new
roles to improve the communication possibilities.
With this new feature the standard is now ready to
support financial portals. FinTS supports a
variety of electronic banking services like money transfers, bank
statements, time deposits,
investments and
the whole area of online brokerage, which can be
used online in a comfortable way.
With the
support of the banking signature card FinTS
offers the highest possible level of security for online banking.
The standard uses modern cryptographical security algorithms to
protect against hacker attacks in an effective way. In addition to
smartcard and magnetic media support FinTS integrates the
popular one time password mechanism PIN/TAN. FinTS
can be used via various online services and networks
(i.e.the internet).
Actually
FinTS is supported by more than 2000
German banks. Well
known manufacturers of online banking
software support this standard - so the customer can chose from a
great variety of products.
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