Finnish banking community is planning a new urgent payment system

Finnish banks are pursuing a new payment system that would allow customers to send urgent payments also outside of regular banking hours late at night or on weekends. In the new system, payments would also be quickly transmitted across the border to other SEPA countries.

The new service is motivated by customer needs and feedback. The real-time transfer of urgent payments would be available 24 hours a day through various customer channels.
The current urgent payment system was built for corporate use in the 1990s, and only operates during banking hours.

Last spring, the Federation of Finnish Financial Services issued a request for information to potential service and system suppliers. A total of 27 suppliers had responded by the deadline.

The request for information raised a lot of interest. A number of selected suppliers have been invited to a workshop to discuss their responses in more detail with the project team.

Banks will decide on further steps of the process after the workshops.