ASC X9
The Accredited Standards Committee X9 (ASC X9, Inc.) is an ANSI (American National Standards Institute) accredited standards developing organization, responsible for the development of financial services standards in the U.S.
ASC X9 is the USA Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to the International Technical Committee on Financial Services ISO/TC 68 under the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), of Geneva, Switzerland, and submits X9 American National Standards to the international committee to be considered for adoption as international standards or ISO standards. Membership is open to all U.S. domiciled companies and organizations in the financial services industry.
Committees
ASC X9 is composed of four Subcommittees based on Financial Services business sectors:
- X9AB - Payments (including checks (paper and electronic, retail and card, and corporate);
- X9C - Credit;
- X9D - Securities; and
- X9F - Data & Information Security.
History
In 1984, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) approved the scope of activity for the X9 Standards Committee on Banking, as "Standardization for Facilitating Banking Operations." Later, X9 expanded its membership beyond banks to include vendors, insurance companies, financial associations, retailers, securities professionals, regulators, and others in the financial services area. With this approval, the name was changed to "X9, Financial Services".
ANSI first granted X9 official accreditation in 1984, and it is now incorporated under a 501c6 non profit designation for associations.
Standards
Examples of X9 standards commonly used today in the US and around the world are:
- Paper and electronic check standards (X9 owns nearly 98% of the standardized real estate on the front and back of checks, the magnetic ink character record was originally developed by X9, the credit and debit card transactions standard operating all card transactions first developed under X9
- Numerous data security standards for financial services including the "PIN" - personal identification standard in wide use today.
- Data Encryption Standard (DES) and its successor Triple DES the current encryption security algorithm used in securing most banking transactions worldwide.
External links
References
Secretariat, ASC X9. "History of ASC X9". Archived from the original on 2006-10-01. Retrieved 2006-11-18. Note: Citation of copyrighted material used by permission of author. Secretariat, ASC X9. "X9 Mission Statement". Archived from the original on 2006-10-01. Retrieved 2006-11-18. Note: Citation of copyrighted material used by permission of author.