Where? I bank with Wells Fargo and to make a wire transfer to anyone in the US, I have to physically walk into a branch and it costs $20.

Chase has "QuickPay", where you just enter the recipient's info, and the transfer is near-instantaneous. Only works with other Chase customers, however. Other banks have similar systems.

That's fairly useless if it doesn't work with other banks.

A lot of people have Chase. I've used it a bunch of times.

Amusingly enough, Wells Fargo has a similar service called SurePay. I have a friend that also banks with Wells Fargo that uses this to transfer funds to be, while it's 'fast' compared to the multi-day delay of ACH transfers it still takes one day before the funds are made available to me - from another customer at the same bank!

It amazes me that we already have four major payment networks in the US that work at the speed of the internet - Visa, MasterCard, Discover and Amex but banks continue to fight to keep ACH slow - probably because they don't make bank on interchange fees.

Banks use the float caused by check processing and transfer delays as investable funds. They have no real incentive to speed up the process, and most measures to reduce delays have come in the form of regulations.

My experience with Chase "quick" pay is that the money disappears for several days and occasionally never reaches the recipient.

Well that is alarming.

Wells Fargo's online banking can send money to anyone with an email address, mobile number or Wells Fargo account number. And there's no charge to use it, though they have a message saying they might start charging in the future.

Bank of America and Chase both have it. You can send money to someone using their email address or mobile phone number.

Those systems are kludges. I'm talking about direct bank to bank account transfers at the push of a button, even for 25 cents.

You can also transfer with an routing+account number.