FinTS (Financial Transaction Services), formerly known as HBCI (Home Banking Computer Interface), is a bank-independent protocol for online banking, developed and used by

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

banks. HBCI was originally designed by Germany's three banking "pillar" networks, namely the

Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe The ''Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe'' ("Savings Banks Financial Group") is a network of public banks that together form the largest financial services group in Germany and Europe by assets. Its name refers to local government-controlled savings banks ...

German Cooperative Financial Group The German Cooperative Financial Group (, sometimes referred to in English as "Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken Cooperative Financial Network") is a major cooperative banking network in Germany that includes local banks named Volksbanken ("people's ...

, and

Association of German Banks The ''Bundesverband deutscher Banken'' (BdB, also branded as Bankenverband and in English as Association of German Banks) is the representative body of profit-oriented banks in Germany and a key lobby group for Germany's financial sector. The Bd ...

. The result of this effort was an open protocol specification, which is publicly available. The standardisation effort was necessary to replace the huge number of deprecated homemade software clients and servers (some of them still using BTX emulation). While IFX (Interactive Financial Exchange), OFX (Open Financial Exchange) and

SET Set, The Set, SET or SETS may refer to: Science, technology, and mathematics Mathematics *Set (mathematics), a collection of elements *Category of sets, the category whose objects and morphisms are sets and total functions, respectively Electro ...

(Secure Electronic Transaction) are tailored for the North American market, HBCI is designed to meet the requirements of the European market. The FinTS-specification is publicly available on a website run by the ZKA (

Central Credit Committee The German Banking Industry Committee (GBIC) ( / ''DK''), known until 2011 as the Central Credit Committee ( / ''ZKA'') is an industry association of the German banking industry. Its decisions are held normative for the national banking sector – ...

Features

* Support for online-banking using

PIN A pin is a device, typically pointed, used for fastening objects or fabrics together. Pins can have the following sorts of body: *a shaft of a rigid inflexible material meant to be inserted in a slot, groove, or hole (as with pivots, hinges, an ...

/ TAN one time passwords. * Support for online-banking with

SWIFT Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to: * SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks ** SWIFT code * Swift (programming language) * Swift (bird), a family of birds It may also refer to: Organizations * SWIF ...

. * DES and RSA encryption and signatures. * Making use of

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

and

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for data-exchange, encryption and signatures. * Implemented on top of

HTTP HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...

HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It uses encryption for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protoc ...

and

SMTP The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typi ...

as communication layer. * Multibanking: The software clients are designed to support accounts on multiple banking companies. * Platform Independence: The specification allows software development for various types of clients. * Storage of the encryption keys on an external physical device (smart card) for improved security. * Possibility to use so called "Secoder" smart card readers to allow the user to cross check the transaction data on a secure device before signing it to uncover manipulations caused by

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. To use Secoder, the bank as well as the home banking software have to support the Secoder protocol extension of FinTS.ZKA: Spezifikation FinTS 3.0 Alternative ZKA Sicherheitsverfahren
(PDF; 1,2 MB) HBCI has been superseded by its successor FinTS, and as of 2011, 2000 financial institutions in Germany are supporting FinTS.

Versions

HBCI 2.2 PIN/TAN

HBCI 2.2 PIN/TAN (or HBCI+) is an extension to HBCI that added a security method based on

s and TANs, which had already been in use with BTX and

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FinTS 3.0

For version 3.0, which formally introduced the PIN/TAN method, the specification was renamed to FinTS, whereas the original DSA- and RSA-based security method retained the name HBCI.

FinTS 4.0

In version 4.0, the basic message syntax was switched over to

. Further, the number of roundtrips necessary was reduced, allowing asynchronous communication (e.g. via

) for simple transaction dialogues.

References

External links

hbci-zka.de

fints.de
- Documentation and protocol information by the ZKA

- FinTS version 4.1 (including link to SEPA adaptions to FinTS)

- FinTS version 4.0 (archived)
aquamaniac.de/aqbanking/
- AqHBCI / OpenHBCI2 free software project
www.pecuniabanking.de
- Pecunia, Online Banking on the Mac, GPL Online banking Banking technology Technical communication Financial routing standards Standards of Germany {{Germany-stub