This sounds similar to the "faster payments" system we have here in the UK, where most transfers should clear within 2 hours (in my experience they actually cle

This sounds similar to the "faster payments" system we have here in the UK, where most transfers should clear within 2 hours (in my experience they actually clear in a matter of minutes, but I guess they say '2 hours' to give a worst case SLA) I thought this was fairly normal, until I heard about the way US banks do it on an episode of Planet Money. The interesting thing about the new Australian system is the fact that you can use an email address or phone number instead of annoying bank account numbers, that's a nice feature. I find account numbers give me crippling anxiety when making big payments, ending up having to triple check that I've inputted every digit correctly etc