scope:

A key element of the Extensions for Financial Services is the definition of a set of APIs, a corresponding set of SPIs, and supporting services, providing access to financial services for Windows-based applications. The definition of the functionality of the services, of the architecture, and of the API and SPI sets, is outlined in this section, and described in detail in Sections 5 through 10. The specification defines a standard set of interfaces such that, for example, an application that uses the API set to communicate with a particular Service Provider can work with a Service Provider of another conformant vendor, without any changes.