Quoted from rotordave:The first quote is "a bank".
Over here (and probably most countries now I would say) credit unions are legally banks anyway. Swipe your EFTPOS card, enter your PIN number and empty your account 20 seconds later. It's your money ...
rd
Knowing both systems quite well it is not quite the same! The key is that in nz we have one source of inter bank settlement and they are now almost real time. In the US there are many different inter bank settlement options so it can still take days for a payment to be confirmed