In the UK, we have an industry-wide "Faster Payments"[1] system that allows for inter-bank transfers in less than an hour. The majority of banks also support Paym[2], which links a bank account to your mobile phone number, so people can send money to your mobile and it lands in your bank account.

Recently, the government decided that an Open Banking API Standard would be a good idea, so work has begun on figuring out how to deliver that.[3]

1: http://www.fasterpayments.org.uk

2: http://www.paym.co.uk

3: http://theodi.org/news/open-banking-working-group-uk-experts...