ISO/IEC 19784-2:2007 defines the interface between a biometric service provider (BSP) and a biometric archive function provider (BAFP) for BioAPI. A BAFP encapsulates all functionality for the storage, search and management of biometric reference data regardless of the kind of physical storage media. Using a BAFP, a BSP does not have to provide special handling of different storage media like database servers, smartcards, database web services, etc. Whatever media is used, the BSP in all cases handles the same interface for a BAFP.

The interface description contains management functions to attach and detach different BAFPs, to query biometric data records and to store biometric data records.