Here in the US it’s only instant if it’s coming out of your account.
If it’s coming out of the bank’s account
Can you please explain the difference here, because that doesn't make sense to me. When am I ever transferring money out of the banks account instead of mine?
It's been a while since I did it but you can authorize it so all e-transfers are automatically accepted and deposited. I can't think of a scenario where that would be a bad thing.
It’s so normal that I can’t actually remember it ever being any different. Even before the advent of mobile banking it was the same with internet banking. Instant transfers.
In Australia we've had free next business day transfers for as long as I can remember. Decades.
The transition to transfers that clear in seconds was happened gradually as bottlenecks were removed from the infrastructure one by one. Some transactions were instant a couple decades ago, but it's only in the last few years that most transactions are instant here.
These days, Visa/Mastercard are basically the slowest way you can pay someone. It's still the most commonly used option though, since it has the best fraud protection.
Same in Poland. That, and Blik system which let's you send money to a phone number (if it's also registered with Blik) and it's actually instant. Not "next transfer window" like Elixir transfers, instant.
The US has this, it's called Zelle, every bank seems to have it, and it's instantaneous. For some reason it's just not popular, probably because Paypal and others are already entrenched.