Open Financial Exchange 1.5 was developed in concert with the financial services companies, billers and technology solution providers implementing the specification and supporting its continued development.

Open Financial Exchange 1.5 features the first complete version of the bill presentment extension, which will serve as the basis toward convergence of the Open Financial Exchange specification with the Integrion Financial Network's GOLD specification. As announced on April 7, 1998 by The Banking Industry Technology Secretariat (BITS), a new open framework for the exchange of financial data and instructions that converges the GOLD and Open Financial Exchange specifications is expected to be published in August 1998. The bill presentment extension defines an open platform for billers and financial institutions on which to build and deploy their bill presentment solutions. The bill presentment extension incorporates revisions suggested by billers and financial institutions to provide greater flexibility when querying for bill summaries, as well as improved handling of multiple message set versions and an expanded data type set. Overall, the bill presentment chapter has been streamlined and made more efficient as compared to 1997's draft chapter. With the enhancements to the specification, Open Financial Exchange 1.5 also supports online financial services in Europe. The European extensions to the specification, which support online banking and bill pay, include message sets to manage the transfers and scheduling of payments for European financial institutions.

Open Financial Exchange 1.5 is now available to be downloaded from the Open Financial Exchange Web site at www.ofx.net. It reflects the continued input of financial services companies, billers and technology solution providers who have been supporting the specification since it was first introduced in February 1997.