Inside the same country, really? We have the aptly-named Faster Payments in the UK and it's instant. The company I work for is virtually built upon it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payment_System_%28Unite...

Only in America. The rest of the world figured it out.

To be fair, this is because the US figured this stuff out way earlier through credit cards, and now there's a bunch of stakeholders and legacy changes which get in the way of making the services better.

Indeed, and there are some good reasons, too: US regulators want to prop up smaller regional banks and avoid large national monopolies (for what is essentially a natural monopoly).

The externalities of the crappy US banking system are so vast though. Musk, crypto, ...

SEPA is among the most stable & robust payment areas globally with a lot of interesting features which a lot of other regions are jealous about :-) And there are additional layers built on top, so at least we have N=1, while I have to admit that convenience could & should be improved