Efficiency Bottlenecks

Today’s banking infrastructure remains deeply tied to manual workflows and legacy operations, making speed and efficiency hard to achieve at scale. Take international remittances as an example: Transfers usually take 1 to 5 business days to clear. But with added compliance steps, multiple intermediary banks, or complex routing, that timeline can stretch to 1–2 weeks.

A closer look at what drives these delays reveals a complex web of structural constraints:

Factors	Effects
Initiation Time/Bank Cut-Off Times	Transfers submitted after the bank’s daily cut-off time are rolled over to the next business day.
Number of Intermediary/Correspondent Banks	If there is no direct channel between the sending and receiving banks, the transfer must pass through multiple intermediary banks, and each step introduces additional delays.
Currency Conversion & Forex	When currency conversion is involved, settlement often depends on FX market hours, which can postpone the final settlement.
Compliance & AML	Large or higher-risk transfers are more likely to trigger manual reviews, significantly increasing processing times.
Receiving Bank Processing Speed	Even after funds reach the receiving bank, internal clearing and crediting checks can further delay the time until the funds are available.
Public Holidays/Weekends/Differences in Working Days Across Countries	Cross-border transfers are especially vulnerable to differences in weekends and public holidays across countries; one non-working day can halt the entire chain.
Banking Infrastructure and Legal Frameworks of Sending/Receiving Bank	Mature financial systems process transactions more quickly, while stricter or less mature infrastructures tend to cause slower settlements.

All of this points to one conclusion: the inefficiencies built into today’s banking system are structural, not accidental. Without system-level upgrades and process overhauls, no amount of fine-tuning will make the system truly faster.