This is stunning to me. Wire transfers are free and fast in my country. I mean maybe some banks charge some people like 10c per transfer but they are mostly free. They are also very common way to transfer money to friends, paying someone, moving money around accounts etc.

A wire transfer is not the same as an ACH transfer. I can send you money for free via ACH, but it takes a few days to clear.

A wire transfer is a realtime transfer between banks. The only time I've used it was while buying a house. I've never done a wire transfer under $20k.

Well in the EU we have SEPA transfwr which are ussually free and close to instant between an increaskng number of banks.

The standard in the UK is "Faster Payments" for domestic transfers and are near instant up to £10K ($14K). For higher amounts you can use BACs (the automatic fallback for FP) which is typically next day.

All free