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...

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.

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.