What country are you in? In the UK bank transfers happen within a couple of minutes.

You can login to your bank, transfer money to someone elses bank, they'll login, and see the money.

My guess is the previous commenter is in US. There's an excellent episode of the podcast "planet money" which addresses exactly this question, and which also explains why the system in the UK is much faster.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/10/04/229224964/episode-...

Nope. Third-world here. I don't think it'll take a couple weeks in the US.