If you cross borders your transaction might get stuck. Also some institutions will refuse to send or receive from less popular counterparties. Combine that with

If you cross borders your transaction might get stuck. Also some institutions will refuse to send or receive from less popular counterparties. Combine that with all the anti-money laundering regulations and KYC laws everywhere making a bureaucratic mess. In Swift it's common to specify a routing/intermediary entity which usually is a bigger bank or a branch in NYC/London to work around this mess. And surprise, you get terrible FX rates and magic fees on both ends. One transaction this year across my own accounts took 4 business days and cost ~$40, within the same continent across two top 10 banks. Now I do everything with TransferWise and it's much better. Hopefully soon I'll just use crypto. It's my own hard earned money, damnit. Fingers crossed.