For person to person (not person to business), electronically, no, not really. ACH takes weeks too (yes I know your bank will credit you in advance temporarily)

There's a nonzero chance you will hit some kind of risk/fraud system based on amount too.

Wire is much better but frequently $50-100 per transaction as a fee.

Wow, that’s crazy. I knew your system had some issues, but I didn’t know it was this bad.

Just for comparison, in Germany, bank transfers are free and take 1-2 days, for a fee or free (depending on the bank) you can do instant transfers taking seconds.

They also like to re-order your pending transactions within a certain time windows to maximize bounce fees.

(If you don't explicitly have overdrafting off, so that it would just fail your transaction instead of letting it go through. The default setting may have changed in the last decade due to law but I remember these scenarios vividly)

$0 balance

+$20

-$1

-$1

-$1

Within a day or two of each other won't necessarily be positive $17 balance.

It could easily become:

$0 balance

-$1 (overdraft fee $40)

-$1 (overdraft fee $40)

-$1 (overdraft fee $40)

+$20

= negative $103 balance

Banks make a lot of money doing this to poor people. The financial class is full of super-predatory behavior.

Can confirm. Had exactly this happen to me years ago when I was a younger man with a much lower income and a much tighter budget. I call it my "how [the bank] stole Christmas" story.

Gaining access to a credit union was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

That’s hilarious in a very sad way.

Same as Australia

In the UK I've paid builders by bank transfer regularly and the payment is usually instant. It's very convenient.

Yes, but they take 1-3 days in my experience. I'm not sure why the parent wouldn't have used them in this case except that they also require sharing of very sensitive information, which doesn't work too well unless transferring within family/close network.