"IFX is more than a messaging specification," comments Martin Macmillan, CEO, Level Four Software. "IFX is a targeted financial solution. Level Four want to contribute to the evolution and broad acceptance of IFX through our commitment to the IFX Forum. We believe the development of the IFX standard is important to our customers."

The IFX Forum is a non-profit standards-developing organisation working to develop a robust framework for the electronic business-to-business exchange of data among financial services institutions around the world. Level Four have the same vision as the IFX Forum of developing one common language that is designed for large-scale interoperability, whether exchanging information between internal and external systems.

"Banks will benefit from a standard messaging protocol and IFX will help them bring multiple channels together. 'Channel Unification' is very cost effective from a back office viewpoint. Moreover, the IFX standard means banks will not be tied to one vendor so Level Four's existing customers will continue to benefit from the company's 'agnostic' technology," comments Macmillan.

Over the past twelve months, Level Four has seen an upsurge of interest in IFX from customers and partners both in Europe and the US. Although the pace of change is increasing, Macmillan observes that this is more true in the US where financial institutions may look to combine the implementation of the IFX standard with a migration of their ATM network to Windows. Banks migrating their ATM networks to TCP/IP, Windows and IFX, as Level Four predicts is the scenario in the US, will require extensive testing. Level Four's current involvement in the IFX Forum enables the company to understand the evolving needs of all parties and to gain access to ATM specifications upon which they can effectively test within a virtual ATM environment.

"Level Four is a leading testing and development software provider and we welcome their participation in the Forum, strengthening the European angle," comments Rick Duvall, Officer, Board of Directors, IFX Forum and ATM Product Manager, ACI Worldwide. "A key aim now for the Forum is to define the de facto standard for implementing IFX to ensure multiple versions of the protocol do not exist. Our goal is to have one standard and we are working together to make this happen."

Level Four's primary software technology is the ATM Channel Development Suite -a comprehensive toolkit that allows financial institutions to develop, test and rapidly deploy new content and applications within their ATM delivery channels.