Open Financial Exchange
Encyclopedia
Open Financial Exchange is a data-stream format
for exchanging financial information
that evolved from Microsoft
's Open Financial Connectivity
(OFC) and Intuit's Open Exchange file formats.
, Intuit and CheckFree and was designed as a unified technical specification to converge their respective mechanisms. The first OFX specification, version 1.0, was released on February 14, 1997.
The specification allows for bank and application specific extensions, although only a subset is necessary to describe a financial transaction. Since the current version is a flavour of XML, it is simple to create well-formed OFX documents.
Versions 1.0–1.6 relied on SGML
for data exchange whereas all versions since are XML
based. According to the main OFX site: "The specification is freely licensed, allowing any software developer to design an interface that will be supported on the front-end."
QFX
is a proprietary variant of OFX used in Intuit's products.
In the Intuit Products, OFX is used for Direct Connect and QFX for Web Connect. Direct Connect allows PFM's to connect directly to a Financial Institution OFX server, whereas in Web Connect, the user needs to login and manually download a .qfx file and import it into Quicken.
Data stream
In telecommunications and computing, a data stream is a sequence of digitally encoded coherent signals used to transmit or receive information that is in the process of being transmitted....
for exchanging financial information
Finance
"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...
that evolved from Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's Open Financial Connectivity
Open Financial Connectivity
Open Financial Connectivity ' is an obsolete file format for financial transaction information. It has since been replaced by OFX.-External links:*...
(OFC) and Intuit's Open Exchange file formats.
History
The OFX standard was announced on the 16 January 1997 by MicrosoftMicrosoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, Intuit and CheckFree and was designed as a unified technical specification to converge their respective mechanisms. The first OFX specification, version 1.0, was released on February 14, 1997.
The specification allows for bank and application specific extensions, although only a subset is necessary to describe a financial transaction. Since the current version is a flavour of XML, it is simple to create well-formed OFX documents.
Versions 1.0–1.6 relied on SGML
Standard Generalized Markup Language
The Standard Generalized Markup Language is an ISO-standard technology for defining generalized markup languages for documents...
for data exchange whereas all versions since are XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
based. According to the main OFX site: "The specification is freely licensed, allowing any software developer to design an interface that will be supported on the front-end."
QFX
QFX (file format)
QFX is Intuit's proprietary version of the standard OFX financial interchange file format. QFX is used in Intuit's "Web Connect" and "Direct Connect" features to transmit and receive financial information over the internet....
is a proprietary variant of OFX used in Intuit's products.
In the Intuit Products, OFX is used for Direct Connect and QFX for Web Connect. Direct Connect allows PFM's to connect directly to a Financial Institution OFX server, whereas in Web Connect, the user needs to login and manually download a .qfx file and import it into Quicken.
See also
- Interactive Financial ExchangeInteractive Financial ExchangeInteractive Financial Exchange is an XML specification for financial transactions such as bill presentment and payment, business to business and consumer to business banking , payments and automated teller machine communications.It is being developed and maintained by a consortium of individuals...
- Office Open XML
- Open XML Paper Specification
- QFX (file format)QFX (file format)QFX is Intuit's proprietary version of the standard OFX financial interchange file format. QFX is used in Intuit's "Web Connect" and "Direct Connect" features to transmit and receive financial information over the internet....
External links
- More information on the OFX specification
- MT2OFX: Tool for conversion between MT940, CSV, QIF, OFC, OFX and other non-binary formats
- Free OFX library
- OFX4J: Free OFX implementation in Java
- OFX Press Release (copy)
- List of OFX connection details for banks that support OFX
- .NET OFX Library
- OFX forums, list of verified OFX connection details