If you're walking into a store you're going to expect verification in less than a minute, that's what you get with credit cards or cash.
While you are correct with cash, you are not with credit cards. Credit cards take at least a day to actually confirm. The "instant" verification that credit cards do is no different from a 0/unconfirmed Bitcoin transaction.
No it's not. An authorization confirms that you have held the funds on the card. After an authorization you do a capture to actually have the funds transferred, and then they will use ACH to transfer funds to your account, which takes a few days but that's just the time an ACH takes. The settlement of all your transactions happens at the end of the day, but an authorization guarantees the funds are good.