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KAL and Česka deliver a ‘world first’ for ATMs with nexo

KAL and Česká spořitelna Bank in the Czech Republic have joined forces to achieve a world first for ATMs. KAL ATM Software is now using the “nexo” transaction message protocol on production ATMs at Česká spořitelna Bank. The first ATM went live on July 13, 2016.

The new standard ATM transaction message protocol, known as nexo, is an extension of the ISO 20022 global standard for host-to-host communication. KAL and a large number of key ATM industry participants are members of the nexo committee who collectively created the new standard for use by banks and vendors globally.

The creation of one global messaging standard for ATMs is important for a number of reasons:

  • Banks can cut costs by using a single, common standard protocol. Today, there are hundreds of ATM protocols in use around the world, some of them are bank-specific, many are vendor-specific (e.g. NDC) and others are country-specific. Unlike these legacy standards, nexo is an open standard and allows better inter-operability between ATMs and banks’ host computers.
  • The nexo protocol uses XML over HTTPS that is easy to implement compared to today’s non-secure binary protocols.
  • Nexo has been defined to be adopted as widely as possible by a global membership of participants from the Americas, Europe and Asia. It is easy to understand and easy to use, and of course is open for any organization to help enhance and modify. Nexo is truly global – the standard was recently accepted by the ISO committee as an ISO standard. Nexo is the inheritor protocol from IFX – the IFX committee joined nexo in 2015 and helped shape the final specification.
  • Nexo also allows interoperability with POS channels – indeed, nexo was initially defined for driving POS terminals before being adapted for ATMs.
  • Using an open standard like nexo will significantly increase a bank’s ability to deliver new innovative services to the ATM. As an example, nexo already supports contactless card transactions and pre-staged transactions at the ATM in the spec.

Česká spořitelna, the biggest bank in the Czech Republic, has 1600 ATMs and is part of the Erste Bank group.

KAL is the leading ATM software company globally with an installed base of ATMs across all continents.

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