I can send any amount of money international for $20 -- it arrives instantly.
I've never received an instant wire from abroad, ever (I live in europe), even with SEPA (our swift-like system for fast transfers between european banks). Are you using a regular bank or something like Western Union?
Bank to bank with swift. Your sending bank needs to clear the transaction on swift immediately and the receiving bank needs to update your account as soon as it detects the transaction. As long as both the sender and receiver are setup this way you can do instant swift transfers. I do have another bank account here that takes 3 days or so for the swift to clear. I don't use that bank very often for obvious reasons.
Oh ya, some banks don't have their own swift access. They use an intermediary bank to process the swift and that usually happens in batches. Only big name banks are able to clear swift transactions instantly. I'm using Chase in the US and BPI in the philippines. HSBC is also a great bank to use for international wire transfers. IIRC, they offer
FREE international wires for certain account / status levels. It's called HSBC premier??
..
Up to 3.5K pending transactions > 421sat/b
Something needs to be done about this, ASAP.