[down]

really an hour? maybe inside the country, internationally is days and more expensive of course depending of the bank, then you add the bank commission for having an account with them, all the paperwork, and all the time, you don't really own the money, the bank owns the money.

[grkvlt]

so, in the UK and EU things are pretty reasonable for electronic funds transfers. in the EU area SEPA instant (~10-20s) payments have been available since november this year between a limited number of member states, and should be rolling out to others during 2018. as for standard SWIFT style international payments, from the UK they should reach the destination the next day, although this will cost more - most banks have charges of tens of pounds. inter bank transfers inside the UK are free, and instant, even for large ones.