Pretty wild. Australia's had NPP since 2018. You can send money to somebody's phone number and it's in their bank account instantly.

https://www.rba.gov.au/payments-and-infrastructure/new-payme...

Can anyone knowledgeable explain (or point to a good reference) why the US doesn't have a real time payment system, say something like UPI in India?

There’s the RTP network in the US as well, but both networks are growing and reach over ~70% of deposit accounts.

Pricing for customers varies by network participant. The network prices are cheap.

For purchases, the US has debit cards and Zelle. Banks instantly exchange non-revocable promises to pay and the money follows at the end of the day. This is more capital (cash) efficient because it allows netting. One key here is that everybody in the US banking system is under the same regulators (Federal Reserve, FDIC/NCUA) so there's greater trust that they won't go under before the cash comes.

A very important point is that debit cards offer consumer protections (chargebacks for unsatisfactory goods). FedNow, Zelle, wires, ACH do not and people have lost money by scams this way.

If you don't need it right that second, same-day ACH is widely used, and again the delay allows more efficient netting.

The Clearing House's CHIPS is a good in-between, it's not guaranteed instant, but uses an algorithm to match transactions as fast as possible with constrained float.

I wonder if Regulation E has anything to do with slow adoption of new tech that's a fraud risk?

Real Time Payments exists in the US as The Clearing House (TCH) RTP® Network

US bank has it, Mercury does as well

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