[PeterisP]

For cash, pretty much every country has a functioning real time gross settlement system that manages to do essentially instantaneous non-reversible commits by default and carries all the large payments and the netting settlements for all kinds of smaller bundled payments. Yes, there are risks, errors and fraud - but if that's manageable for very, very large amounts of cash, why wouldn't it be for stock?

[rodgerd]

Most countries do not settle in real-time, or even close to it.

Even ones moving towards it are still allowing 5 - 15 minute windows on settlement.

[hehehaha]

I would go even further. If I am building a next gen electronic wallet (which happens to be a side project of mine) I’d build in a full week of escrow-like mechanism by default.