I'm also not sure what electronic payments you're referring to (transfers to others?). I deposit money and it shows up instantly. I buy something from Amazon.com via a Visa card attached to my checking account and it shows up instantly on my account.
I transfer money to and from my bank accounts using ACH transfers. It typically takes a few days for those to clear.
If something is wrong or fraudulent (such as, say, exploiting a race condition in how transactions are handled) it's much much easier to arbitrate or reverse everything in-house.
I'd wager a lot of people here have--one time or another--written a bit of code saying "sleep X seconds to be safe", or "wait until you confirm Y had no errors". Same kind of idea.
I don't see your point? I didn't say it was hard to get a free checking account, I said they make you jump through hoops and open a bunch of related products so they'll waive the $10-15/month fee.
That hasn't been my personal experience. I've never had to jump through hoops or have a minimum balance.
I'm just sharing my experience which is apparently different from yours.
Oh wait... I had to pay a one time $5 fee to join one of my local credit unions.
They don't have brick and mortar offices, but I don't miss it.
A while back I even found someone offering business accounts for free.
Electronic payments in the US are painful and slow. They often don't work at all on weekends, and certainly don't have the 2-3 hour speed of the "Faster Payments" system in the UK (which is often borderline instant).
Banks actually intentionally make it a real pain in the butt to send money to another bank, and stupidly easy to send money between accounts linked at the same bank. Last time we needed to set that up it took almost an hour, because of how they confusingly set up the UI and naming. Then the payment took a full 7 day week to arrive in the other party's account.
Plus in the US you have to have $1500 in a savings account (almost 0% interest "savings") and pay in your pay cheque and jump through a million other hoops just to get a free current (checking) account. So you'd assume the fees would be lower and customer service better? NOPE. Fees are higher than the UK, and CS is worse.
Everyone keeps saying "join USAA!" but unfortunately they closed the loophole that allowed non-military to sign up for a checking account right before I could. So no dice. Traditional banks are just horrible in the US, just awful, it cannot be overstated.