I've been impressed by the new Faster Payments service in the UK. It's always been possible to send money to other accounts at any bank just by entering the name, account, sort code and amount on the online account service, but it's taken 3-4 days. I've recently been sent a few payments and they have arrived in the time it's taken me to login to my account to check if it has arrived. Apparently the banks were considering charging for the "service", but I haven't heard about any actually doing this.