Finland's banking industry has laid out its intention to establish a real-time payments system and invited potential suppliers to make their pitches.

The country's current 'urgent' payment system, dubbed Pops, was built in the early 1990s and is now "becoming obsolete", says the Federation of Finnish Financial Services, which maintains the platform.

The federation has now put out a 'request for information' asking potential suppliers to explain how they would help create a 24/7/365 system fit for the Sepa-era.

The new system must be real-time, be cross-border, covering at least the entire Sepa zone, and provide application-level acknowledgement of the payment received by the beneficiary.

The banks say that the system must be connected to a network that is "at least equal to Swift" and designed in a way that makes it easy for them to develop their own products and services.

Potential suppliers have until September to submit a written response to the request for information, which can be viewed here (PDF).