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Hello,

My team is working on implementing a payment functionality for USD check payments to Bank of America (BofA) using IFS Cloud 2025R1. We were advised by IFS R&D to use the ISO20022A1 payment format for this purpose.

We've set up the payment order and created the payment file. However, we've encountered a few issues and have a key question for the community on how this is intended to work.

 

The Problem

 

The payment format generates an application message with the MESSAGE_FUNCTION hard-coded to SEND_SEPA_CREDIT_TRANSFER.

This results in the generated XML file using a SEPA schema and an explicitly defined SEPA namespace, despite the payment data being for a USD check.

This seems to be a fundamental mismatch, as SEPA is a Euro-based electronic transfer standard, not a format for USD check payments.

 

Questions for the Community

 

  • Is the ISO20022A1 format the correct and standard format to use for non-SEPA, USD check payments in IFS?

  • Is the hard-coded SEND_SEPA_CREDIT_TRANSFER message function expected behavior for this payment format? If so, how have other customers managed to route and successfully integrate this with their banks?

  • Have other customers successfully implemented a working BofA check payment integration using this or a similar format? Any insights or advice on how to correctly configure this would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for your help.

​@Danushka 

You can use the ISO 20022 format for check payments in the US. Don’t worry about the code references to SEPA — this comes from the history of how the format evolved from SEPA into the global ISO 20022 standard. A full code clean-up has been challenging for R&D, since the format is so widely used and handling such changes during upgrades is not straightforward. Hence, it was decided to retain the SEPA naming conventions within the ISO 20022 format.

However, I am not aware about the format ISO20022A1 which might be a misunderstanding. It should be standard ISO20022 format.

About the integration you have to understand whether your customer expect a direct integration with the Bank of America. If not you can let them to upload the created check instruction XML file via internet banking. We have done this several times, but you have to do some adjustments to standard XML transformer to cater with the bank specific format.

Hi Danushka,

If I am not mistaken, the ISO Check functionality (sending check information via ISO file) was introduced by IFS R&D in release 24R2. You may refer to the release materials for 24R2 to get an overview of the IFS offering in this area.

Next, you will need to obtain the bank specification from Bank of America and compare it against the IFS offering. This step is crucial if you plan to integrate the files directly with the bank.

In case of any mismatches, those can be managed through configuration at the transformer level.

As Eranda mentioned, we have already implemented this functionality for several customers in the US, not only with Bank of America but also with other major banks as well.

Best regards,
Chirantha.

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