[cameldrv]

It's not real-time, but Same Day ACH is here. The Fed charges about 5 cents for it, and it processes within roughly 4 business hours. The biggest problem with ACH as I see it is that there's not a widely implemented memo field that goes along with the transaction for invoice/customer numbers etc. This makes matching up incoming transactions a hassle, and so billers don't want to just give you their bank account number, they want you to sign up on their web site.

In the EU with SEPA, there's roughly the same functionality but with the memo, and that is the standard way to pay for things, without any third party billing platform being in the middle.