Structured Financial Messaging System

{{Short description|Indian equivalent of the SWIFT financial transfer system}}

{{More citations needed|date=November 2010}}

{{Infobox company

| name = SFMS

| logo =

| type = Payment system

| key_people =

| slogan =

| foundation = {{start date and age|2001|df=y}}

| location = Hyderabad, Telangana, India

| num_employees =

| industry =

| parent = Reserve Bank of India

| products =

| homepage = {{URL|https://iftas.in/services/sfms/}}

}}

Structured Financial Messaging System (SFMS) is a secure messaging standard developed to serve as a platform for intra-bank and inter-bank applications. It is an Indian standard similar to SWIFT which is the international messaging system used for financial messaging globally.

SFMS can be used for secure communication within the bank and between banks. The SFMS was launched on December 14, 2001 at IDRBT.{{cite web|url =http://www.idrbt.ac.in/sfms.html |title= Structured Financial Messaging System (SFMS) |access-date=30 April 2015}} It allows the definition of message structures, message formats, and authorization of the same for usage by the financial community.{{citation needed|date=May 2015}} SFMS has a number of features and it is a modularised and web enabled software, with a flexible architecture facilitating centralised or distributed deployment. The access control is through Smart Card based user access and messages are secured by means of standard encryption and authentication services conforming to ISO standards.{{citation needed|date=May 2015}}

The intra-bank part of SFMS is used by banks to take full advantage of the secure messaging facility it provides.{{citation needed|date=May 2015}} The inter-bank messaging part is used by applications like electronic funds transfer (EFT), real time gross settlement systems (RTGS), delivery versus payments (DVP), centralised funds management systems (CFMS) and others. The SFMS provides application program interfaces (APIs), which can be used to integrate existing and future applications with the SFMS.{{citation needed|date=May 2015}} Several banks have integrated it with their core or centralised banking software.{{citation needed|date=May 2015}}