[doyoureallytnot]

> it shouldn't take more than a couple hours That's simply not true. It takes days for most banks to "settle their books", before which any money they've transferred hasn't really gone anywhere.

For day-to-day expenses for us common folk that's not really a concern but for big sums of money the recipient will want a little more certainty of the transaction having completed.

This can take weeks with some banks too.

(Source: I work for a major bank)

[hocuspocus]

Well your employer sucks then. It certainly doesn't take my banks days to receive a Swift transfer.

[chrisco255]

This is another good point. Even for day-to-day transactions, VISA is not instant. The only thing that's instant is the authorization that you can spend X amount of money. But the actual transfer of funds from customer account to merchant account takes days. Whereas, again, with Bitcoin or crypto, it's minutes to settle.