EBICS tests with customers in a productive bank server?

As of EBICS 2.4, in France it is possible to not use the business transactions with 3-character order types that are customary in Germany and other countries, but to instead exchange FileFormat parameters of up to 40 characters. These must each be introduced with the FUL or FDL order types. Here, it is possible to specify a so-called test flag. Using this flag, during the productive operation, an EBICS customer can make a test submission and signal this to the financial institution, for example when sending a file. Provided that there is a bilateral agreement on the use of the test flag, the financial institution may accept the order, classify it as a test case and separate it prior to the actual processing. The use of a test flag in the running operation is not uncontroversial to the financial institutions. Presently, the German financial institutions mainly reject such an option.

With the current EBICS version 3.0 and the unified use of BTFs instead of order types and FileFormat parameters the existing test flag is omitted in the EBICS specification. In addition, with the EBICS CR EB-17-01 Element Group Parameter a stricter check of the use of not bilaterally agreed upon specifications in the generic parameters of the BTF has been introduced. Specifications that are not permitted are now rejected with the EBICS return code 09-0-0-06: EBICS_UNSUPPORTED_REQUEST_FOR_ORDER_INSTANCE.

To assist with the introduction of EBICS 3.0 in France, the French CFONB has created their own migration guidelines (EBICS 3.0 Aide à la migration BTF & Table de correspondance File Format/BTF). Since in France the test flag has been used by financial institutions in the past and there will continue to be a need for such an option in the future, for the BTF migration the CFONB has defined the use of the test mode for BTF and added it as an optional feature in the guidelines. Therefore, in the case of bilateral agreements between the financial institution and the customer even for BTF the parameter TEST can be used in test cases. If the specification of the parameters differs, a rejection occurs with the return code mentioned above. EBICS bank servers and EBICS clients can optionally offer this functionality.

Independent from this, for EBICS there is also the alternative to use business transactions (BTFs) that have been especially agreed upon bilaterally for the test submissions.

In the end, however, it must be noted that when using the test option in the production environment there is always a risk that the test data may negatively affect the production or even unexpectedly be introduced into the production data.

The more secure option then remains to have an own EBICS bank server installation for EBICS tests with customers. And why not?


Author: Michael Lembcke

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