To give you the comparable situation - in the UK we have two numbers associated with every bank account (historically one identified the branch of the bank the

To give you the comparable situation - in the UK we have two numbers associated with every bank account (historically one identified the branch of the bank the account was held with, and the other identified the account, but nowadays there’s no real link between a branch anymore). For me to send money to another person or company’s bank account, I just those two numbers, and I can send up to £25k and it will be in their bank account almost instantly. In the last couple of years they introduced a system where it goes to the other person’s bank account to check whether the name you have given for them matches the name on the account, so it warns you if there is a mismatch that there might be fraud. You can also schedule in advance “standing orders” which pay money to an account on a certain day. This is how pretty much everyone pays rent. We have direct debits where you can pay companies on a regular basis and almost everyone uses this for bills like for local government taxes, energy, water. With this, the company asks for permission to withdraw money for your account on a recurring basis with your details and you have to approve it. Guarantees are built into this system though, so if the company takes more money than they are supposed to, you can call your bank and they are able to pull back the funds. Both of these have been around since the 60s so when online banking came along it was just implemented in that. It got faster at some point I don’t remember - it used to take about a day for UK transfers but it’s usually seconds now. You can also send money abroad but it has slightly different limits and takes a bit longer. You just need the IBAN of the account though and can still all be done online in a few clicks.