What is a Standard?

A Standard is a document which enables system and product builders to develop their products in a way that achieves maximum cost benefit by way of streamlined requirements. Standards also enable interoperability between systems and products built by one vendor with those built by others.

Standards are developed by interested parties, e.g. users and manufacturers, and are agreed upon usually by consensus. Conformance to standards is voluntary unless a national or regional directive mandates their use, or an industry agreement is reached.

Standards can be either company specific (e.g. APACS), industry-wide, national, European or International.

Standards can also be either technical or procedural.

Why do we have Standards?

We have Standards to ensure that business processes and functions are carried out in the most efficient, cost-effective, unambiguous way, for all of the parties involved.

In the finance industry, there are many business functions that need to be undertaken by a large number of organisations. For example, a business or store that accepts a credit or debit card must route the transaction back to the card scheme so that they can be paid. The scheme in turn must bill the customer so that the card scheme can be reimbursed.

Another example is a bank accepting a cheque. The funds need to be taken from the account of the person who wrote the cheque, and paid into the account of the person presenting the cheque for payment. These may well be two different banks.

There are many different ways these types of transactions could be achieved, but having one standardised way of undertaking them ensures that the business process is streamlined, efficient and unambiguous to all the parties involved.

What areas do Standards cover?

Standards cover nearly all areas of banking. For example, the layout of certain fields on a cheque, such as the amount box, the code line, and the signature field, are all laid down in APACS Standard 3. Other fields, such as the bank name (font size/type, colour), are left to the discretion of the issuing bank.

Other areas covered by standards are

• Electronic payments such as CHAPS, Faster Payments and Bacs
• Cards and card payments
• Cheques and credits
• Security
  

PIN Mailer Security Accreditation SchemeAPACS has published security standards for PIN mailers, and is introducing an accreditation scheme for PIN mailer stationery and PIN mailer printing services.