this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
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Thanks for the concise explanation! Sounds like quite the hassle indeed.
My home country is Australia and it's basically the polar opposite. A direct deposit (what we call a wire transfer) is always less than 24 hours and never costs anything to the account holders. Even for hundreds of thousands of dollars (such as when purchasing property).
There's also a secondary system called Osko and if both banks support it the transfer is instant (and still free). Salaries must be paid using direct deposit (to ensure an electronic 'paper trail'). No one with a job or government benefits is unbanked. For at least the last 35 years everyone opens their first bank account at elementary school, where the (former) government bank attends and sets up a fee free account for each child. There are no account fees. Only 15% of transactions in Australia involve cash money, and almost all others are direct deposit or direct debit with about 0.1% being cheques.
If for some reason an individual doesn't have an app with their account info on it they will carry it in their wallet. Many people have an email address attached to their account anyway and you can use the email address instead for sending a direct deposit. Most businesses still require the Bank/Account number instead though.
The number of people with a cheque book is statistically insignificant. The government will cease using cheques by 2028, and they will be completely abolished by 2030. I haven't seen a cheque in the last 20 years in Europe, Asia or Oceania. The last time I saw one was in 2023 in Las Vegas.
Yeah, it sounds like it's much better implemented there. I've always found it stupid that in today's age of everything being digital, that it could take more than a day for money to go from point A to point B, especially since it's not like trucks are being loaded with gold or money or anything like that, its all centrally managed anyway, from what I understand, the us attempted to start a system back in 2023 that would allow for real-time transfers of small denominations, when they got a scare that blockchain was gaining traction, but I don't think it ever went anywhere.
Bank accounts are very different in the states, through, while a good portion of the people here do have bank accounts. There are a handful that just never open one. They exclusively cash their checks at a store like Walmart or something like that that handles check services (which have a fee to do). ACH is generally free as long as it's a deposit, wire transfer out is sometimes fee'd and the same with wire transfer in. And some banks don't easily show your routing or your account number in order to be able to set up a transfer. Like I have four banks myself and of those four banks, one of them I have to call to get that information. One fees me on wire out with no fee on deposit, a one restricts how much I can wire out at a time (I think it's 300 daily) and the last one I have no issues. Only 2 of them show the info needed for it right in the app. I agree that 90% of the time. I would much rather have a wire transfer, but it can be a hassle at times.