The Sub-group on Standardisation of Message Formats for the Banking and Financial Sector set up by the INFINET User Group, in their Report recommended the adoption of SWIFT message formats for inter and intra-bank applications with the following modifications:

Incorporation of an eight digit date field for Y2K compliance; Adoption of a 11 character code for identifying bank and branches; Establishment of a National Payments System Code (//IN) which needs to be registered with SWIFT, to enable routing of the inbound SWIFT messages to INFINET.

The sub-group also recommended the constitution of a Working Group for: Development of Message Types for the identified applications (list provided at Annexure). Review and modify existing message types in consultation with Payments System related groups (including changes required on account of SWIFT modifications). Development of message types for new applications/transactions.

The Group decided to club messages belonging to a particular set of transactions under the broad generic framework of INFINET FORMAT CATEGORY (IFC). The details of IFC are given below:

• IFC 1 - Customer Payments and Cheques
• IFC 2 – Financial Institution Transfers
• IFC 3 – Treasury Markets – Foreign Exchange, Money Market, Derivatives
• IFC 4 – Collections and Cash Letters
• IFC 5 – Securities Markets
• IFC 6 – Precious Metals and Syndications
• IFC 7 Documentary Credits and Guarantees
• IFC 8 – Travellers Cheques
• IFC 9 – Cash Management and Customer Status
• IFC n – Common Group Messages
• 298G - Message Category for Government Transactions
• 298C - Currency Transfer Transactions

System Messages Under each of the distinct IFC Category, messages for individual transactions have been adopted. Each of the IFC Categories has several messages with specific INFINET Format Number (IFN) for each message. The IFC and IFN classification and field definitions under IFN closely follow the pattern of SWIFT standards.