People are almost always talking about Faster Payments [0] rather than BACS. It really is instant.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payment_System_(Unite...
I was pleasantly surprised when I bought a house that I could just transfer everything instantly with faster payments. I was fully expecting to deal with CHAPS, etc.
But the faster payments ceiling is large enough that buying a house falls under the limit.
Yeah Faster Payments is great, though it's relatively new in the scheme of banking and was explicitly designed to speed up small transfers (though now up to 1M I think?). My point was that the legacy system here is comparable to other countries. And until very recently a lot of companies still used BACS because that's how their payroll was set up.
I definitely miss it in other places I've worked.