I think US banking is the outlier here. I've never paid anything like this anywhere in Europe, the vast majority of transactions (for example SEPA) are free, or very close to free.

Free, and in at least the UK, virtually instant when transferring between UK banks.

I’ve found SEPA to be highly overrated. Upon further investigation I learned that Europeans have little experience with cross-border SEPA.

Its free but not anywhere near instant (although your conversation was not about speed). The instant version of SEPA exists in a thin patchwork, which might solve the most common use cases of people in the same country using that country’s largest banks. Everything else is pretty much the same as ACH in the US in that it also takes several business days, and is also free.

I've never had cross border SEPA take longer than a business day. Don't doubt it can happen, but if you submit before the cutoff and it's not there by end of next business day your bank or the recipient bank are violating the rules.

Most folk don't even know it exists because it's been the default option in their Internet banking for so long..

Free instant P2P bank transfers in India. Maybe blockchain isn't the only solution.

Same in pretty much every sane country

And many hours delay and only once per day (most banks).

Yeah,I'm 8am-3pm M-F only for a wire and they have to call me to verbally verify it before routing. Quite annoying.

Then you both have terrible banking arrangements.

Welcome to the poverty section of the United States. Would you like to help?

I'm not in the US, but it seems like you, as a nation, need to get your retail banking system in order. You're behind (by the sounds of things) all of Europe, much of the far east, India, Aus/NZ and a bunch of other places.

Yes. Most of us know this. We're not exactly complete idiots.

There's this thing called lobbying over here. It means if you have a lot of money, you make the laws. Apparently, those with the money making the laws don't particularly care to do what you've advised. Thank you for your understanding.

Great, so it seems like you need to sort your systems out and figure out this democracy thing a bit better. Best of luck with that.