X9 Board of Directors

The X9 Board of Directors makes the final decisions on new work efforts to develop standards and makes the ultimate decision on approval of standards. Thus, the Board of Directors acts as the Consensus Body within X9. This group also acts as the U.S. Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to ISO TC68, ISO TC322 and ISO TC321 for international standards. Subcommittees with experts mirroring important business sectors of the financial services industry report to the Board of Directors. Under these broad business areas of the Subcommittees, additional experts are organized into Work Groups. The Board also forms management committees that serve X9.

X9A Electronic and Emerging Payments Subcommittee  

The X9A subcommittee develops and supports standards that are focused on electronic and mobile payments, including wholesale, retail, and benefits. This subcommittees also houses U.S. mirror groups to ISO TC68 that are responsible for developing and supporting international retail card and mobile-based payments.

X9A1 Distributed Ledger Terminology Work Group

The work group will address gaps in industry needs to foster the security, integrity, and accessibility of Blockchain and Distributed Ledger technology for emerging payments and financial services. Examples include but are not limited to terminology standards and risk mitigation guidelines.

X9A4 QR Code Payments Work Group

The workgroup will develop a standard on QR Code Payments. The workgroup will focus on content including the format, specifications and minimum information included in the payload to generate a QR code – either presented by a Merchant or presented by a Consumer.  Content also includes the format, specifications and minimum information included in the alphanumeric string representation of the QR Code. Each position in the string provides information about a payment transaction including things like transaction amount, currency, biller/merchant etc.

X9A11 Electronic Benefits Transactions Work Group

The X9A11 work group develops standards around electronic benefits including Electronic Benefits Transactions (EBT), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Women Infant and Children program (WIC).

X9B Financial Services Operations Subcommittee

The X9B Financial Services Operations Subcommittee develops and supports standards that are focused on interoperability and reduction of dependency on manual and paper-based processing. Presently, the X9B Financial Services Operations Subcommittee supports standards for design of all elements of manufacturing, electronic processing, and delivery of checks, as well as other paper-based back-office operations, such as legal orders (subpoenas, levies, etc.).

X9B1 Organizational Standards Paper & Image Work Group

The X9B1 working group supports the organization of check related payment standards and the definitions used in those standards.

X9B2 Check and Image Related Standards Work Group

The X9B2 working group supports standards and guidelines for check image exchange, file formats, TIFF and substitute check creation.

X9B3 Check Printing and Related Standards Work Group

The X9B3 working group supports standards and guidelines for the production, printing, and testing of paper checks.

X9B4 Legal Order Processing Work Group

The X9B4 working group supports the development of standards and guidelines for electronic legal order processing including levies and subpoenas. Working in collaboration, several financial institutions and state agencies have already created and implemented a standard for exchanging requests for information and payment related to levies, child support arrears, and taxes through X9B4 in an electronic file format. This workgroup is also focused on developing a standard for third parties to request financial information pursuant to subpoenas and similar legal requests, as well as the responses of financial institutions.

X9B5 Audit Confirmations and Account Verification

The purpose of the work group is to develop an electronic exchange standard for account information confirmations for authorized independent auditors (on behalf of their clients) as well as account verifications (verification of deposit, account status, address verification, etc.)

X9C Corporate Banking Subcommittee

Corporate Banking is an umbrella term for treasury, finance, and cash management functions within a corporation and for banking services offered to corporations. Corporate banking is separate from capital-raising, mergers advice or risk mitigation. It’s usually the work-a-day stuff of a corporate treasurer: Moving cash between thousands of separate accounts; handling foreign-currency transactions; financing short-term trade balances; and processing customer payments.  As payments evolve to real-time, X9C is committed to supporting Faster Payment initiatives to ensure a thoughtful end-to-end payment experience for corporate-related payments.  Through ISO 20022 XML formats, payment origination and reporting can be greatly normalized across payment systems worldwide to simplify processes to identify and book payments. X9C will work closely with the Federal Reserve, The Clearing House, SWIFT, and other industry-leading clearing and standards organizations as they introduce these payment methods to the corporate community.  X9C will collaborate with other X9 work-streams, including X9A that oversees consumer card payments.

X9C1 Balance Transaction Reporting Specification (formerly BAI’s Cash Management Reporting) Work Group

In 2009, the Banking Administration Institute transferred the copyright of BAI2 to X9.  Since that time, X9C1 revised the format into the BTRS/BTR3 standard by modernizing the codes list and rewriting the Format Guide to be more of a technical specification (both are available free for download on the x9.org/BTRS site).  In 2020, X9C1 made further BTRS updates to standardize Information Reporting of Real-Time Payments (RTP) from The Clearing House.  X9C1 will continue to follow Faster Payments initiatives to promote normalization of payment reporting between banks and from banks to corporates.

X9C2 B2B Virtual Purchase Cards Work Group

The scope of this Work Group will focus on providing standards for card input formats, email format, supplier (payee) authentication protocols, and life of the card.  The workgroup will also promote a standard for downstream supplier remittance reporting.  The focus will be on formats consistent with ISO 20022 and ease of integration into the major ERP applications in the marketplace.  

X9D Securities Subcommittee

X9D is the securities subcommittee of X9. Their scope includes the development, maintenance, and adoption of standards that facilitate global straight-through processing and shortened settlement cycles in the securities industry. It also includes the maintenance of standards for clearance, settlement, transfer and related processes for physical securities in the US marketplace. X9D develops recommendations for US input into ISO 20022 Securities work efforts.

X9F Data & Information Security Subcommittee

X9F work efforts focus on data and information security standards. The X9F subcommittee is currently involved in projects like message encipherment and digital signature algorithms. Members of this group are actively involved both nationally and internationally on identity theft issues.

X9F1 Cryptographic Tools Work Group 

The Cryptographic Tools workgroup is responsible for drafting cryptographic algorithm standards under the X9F subcommittee. These tools are intended to be used to provide guidance for implementing confidentiality, integrity, and non-repudiation protection of financial data as well as authentication of financial system users. Standards drafted within the X9F1 working group are often referenced within other ASC X9 standards when such cryptographic tools are required. These standards are based on accepted cryptographic practices and sound mathematical techniques. The X9F1 working group maintains the ASC X9 Registry of Approved Cryptographic Resources for Financial Services Industry Standards, which references selected standards and techniques that were developed outside of ASC X9 but are now approved for ASC X9 use. X9F1 membership consists of government agencies for technology and security, consulting organizations, financial product vendors, financial service providers and end-users financial institutions.

X9F4 Cybersecurity and Cryptographic Solutions Work Group

The X9F4 workgroup focuses on drafting security standards for the proper implementation and evaluation of protocols and technologies for the financial services industry. One of three working groups reporting to the X9F subcommittee and established in 1996 to draft a secure remote banking standard, the X9F4 working group has had its scope expanded over the years to include cryptographic message syntax (CMS), public key infrastructure (PKI), biometrics, trusted time stamps and mutual authentication standards. X9F4 membership consists of consultants, auditors, attorneys, service providers, product providers and end-users, including both government as well as financial institutions. X9F4 provides technical comments on international standards in support of the X9 role as the US technical advisory group (TAG) to ISO TC68 Financial Services. Overall the X9F4 working group is drafting or initiating revisions to over a dozen standards.

X9F5 Financial PKIs Work Group

X9F5 Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) workgroup develops standards, technical reports, and other PKI-related documents including Certificate Practice Statement (CPS) for the financial service industry. The workgroup supports the X9F PKI Study Group and the USA TAG to ISO TC68/SC2/WG8 PKI. X9F5 also monitors other PKI standards and liaisons with other PKI-related development organization (SDO) and industry groups.

X9F6 Cardholder Authentication and ICC’s Work Group

X9F6 writes and maintains standards used in retail financial services to support authentication of payment card users. The suite of standards addressed by the working group includes standards on the secure management and handling of Personal Identification Numbers (PINs), encryption key management for keys used in retail financial transactions, message authentication, tamper-resistant security module evaluation, and Integrated Chip Cards (ICCs). The working group is also responsible for a series of technical reports that provide usage guidance for its standards.

X9F7 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Work Group

This is X9’s first work group primarily focused on artificial intelligence (AI). The primary purpose of the group is to develop and maintain standards related to the use of generative AI by the financial services industry. The work group also aids in the education of the membership of X9 about the responsible usage of AI. X9F7 works with other X9 groups to determine if some aspects of AI should be included in their standards while also coordinating its work with the X9 AI Study Group.