How long does a wire transfer take? Within the United States today, the answer varies from about five seconds for a near-instant service to up to five days for a traditional Automated Clearing House transaction. The range is similar for costs. Some customers can make basic transfers for free. Others have to pay fees, especially if they want the money to move fast. And some lucky banking clients pay nothing for near-instant service.
“What’s crazy is that other countries are way ahead of us in digital payments, even though the U.S. is home to some of the best tech companies in the world,” says Joe Camberato, CEO and founder of National Business Capital, who’s been in banking for more than 20 years. “By now, payments should be instant and available 24/7. It’s about time we caught up.”
Learn why bank transfers can take so long today, and if there is hope for change in the future.
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The State of Payments
Camberato describes the current payments system in the U.S., which is largely based on ACH for in-country transfers, as one giant mess of regulation, old outdated systems and profit centers banks are protecting.
ACH is “ancient by tech standards,” Camberato says. “And there are intermediaries and middlemen involved in these transactions who all take their cut, which drives up costs. These systems also don’t operate in real time; they run in batches and don’t process on weekends. In 2025, that’s pretty ridiculous. The FedNow system runs in real time, but it’s optional for banks to use, and there are integration costs, hurdles and challenges integrating this system into a bank’s current system.”
Yet, despite its flaws, ACH has grown quickly as Americans have abandoned their checkbooks. A March 2025 report from the Federal Reserve revealed consumer ACH credit transfers grew 34.7% by number and 25.4% by value each year between 2018 and 2021. In February 2025, the Clearing House’s real-time payments network reached a milestone with more than 1 billion transactions, doubling in just 18 months.
Transfers in Other Countries
Things in other advanced countries are very different. Take U.K. banks as an example. Consumers have the free-to-use Faster Payments Service. Normally, it takes seconds for the payee to receive money, though it can take up to two hours if the account is with a non-mainstream bank. Naturally, other payment options exist for high-value transfers.
FPS was introduced in 2008, eight years before RTP was implemented in the U.S. But the British were far from the first. Japan started near-instant payments in 1973, while Mexico joined the club in 2004.
Meanwhile, in the 26 nations that are members of the European Union, instant transfers are commonplace today. And since January 2025, it is illegal for a bank to charge a fee for these, even if the transfer is outside the payer’s country — as long as the payee’s account is within the EU.
Why Are American Banks Lagging?
The United States is a very large country with a complex mix of banking regulators and systems. “Bankers have long understood the need to move money faster, but are held back by complex legacy systems, changing regulatory environments and steep increases in various forms of fraud,” says Trent Sorbe, chief payments officer at First International Bank & Trust, who has been a banker for more than 30 years, including a spell as an FDIC bank examiner.
While fraud might be a concern for bankers, it is more prevalent with legacy systems like ACH. According to BAI, a company that offers banking compliance training, current fraud rates on RTP and FedNow are significantly lower compared to traditional payment systems such as ACH, wire transfers and checks.
Regulation
The regulatory environment in the United States may well play a part in holding back innovations in near-instant payments. American banks have to comply with both federal and state laws and are hemmed in by regulators at both levels. By contrast, the European Union sets standards for its 26 member nations, which have a combined population of 448 million. A bank that complies with that single set of rules has nothing to worry about.
So Many American Banks and Credit Unions
Meanwhile, the sheer number and diversity of American financial institutions is staggering. There were 4,487 FDIC-insured institutions at the end of 2024 and another 4,455 NCUA-insured credit unions nationwide, making a total of 8,942. Some of those are huge, world-beating financial institutions with state-of-the-art technologies. But others are tiny regional banks and credit unions, which may lack the money, will or vision to invest in near-instant payment infrastructures.
That is very different from the U.K.’s retail banking environment where, according to the Bank of England, there are 117 U.K.-based banks and 324 banks total operating in the country, including foreign banks.
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How Quickly Might Things Get Better?
American banks might have made a slow start in implementing near-instant payments, but they can move at speed when they want to. And the pressure on smaller banks to embrace the necessary technologies is growing.
In a 2025 report on real-time payments, the industry publication PYMNTS argued this year could be the pivotal time when many banking laggards finally embrace near-instant payments.
“Consumers increasingly expect their financial institutions to offer real-time payments and are willing to switch banks to access these services,” PYMNTS says in its report. “FIs that adopt instant rails early could gain significant market share, while procrastinators could be at a competitive disadvantage in meeting customer demands for faster payments.”
Cautious Bankers
However, some conservative banks may continue to resist. As recently as September 2023, Bank Director magazine argued that many banks are unwilling to come up with the investment and endure the disruption that implementing such operationally critical new tech inevitably brings.
However, that approach can have only a limited shelf life if near-instant payments reach a critical mass and consumers come to expect it from their banks. And that might not be all that far off.
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Why Do Bank Transfers Take so Long and Cost so Much? originally appeared on usnews.com
