I use https://transferwise.com/ for British Pound <=> Euro. First couple of times takes about 1 day, later (whatever scoring they use) it goes down to hours. I've seen within an hour once.
NEFT/RTGS is the system in India which is equivalent of the ACH in the US and it takes maximum 1 hour to transfer funds.
(Disclaimer: Other parts of the economy may not be so smooth :). )
The CEO pays my invoice on Monday and it gets to the contract company on Friday, if I'm lucky. Good for me though - the intermediate has their bank account with Transferwise - so when they pay me, it's in my account in barely minutes after I get the email they've paid me.
From from Transferwise USD account, it's usually seconds to get to my UK-based bank (one of the first group of 'Challenger banks'), and if I want to pay myself from there, it's also seconds to minutes at most from there, to my personal account.
TLDR: It's a week to go from one US company to another, but just a couple of minutes to hop across the atlantic, and between UK banks.
There are no good international money sending services because it’s a highly regulated industry. These regulations, such as AML laws, are important but cause transactions to be slower and more expensive.
- the number of intermediaries in the chain: the bank to which the money is going usually doesn't have an account with the bank that sent the money, so effectively the transfer is split up into multiple transfers between banks
- foreign exchange volatility: when sending money abroad, the bank gives you a firm quote now for the rate at which they will convert one currency to another; they reduce the chance they will lose money by charging you a rate worse than the current mid-market rate.
- operating costs: banks have to run processes for AML, KYC, CS etc.
- risk/fraud costs: provisions for actual losses from internal/external fraud
To your later questions:
- many companies have tackled this issue and aim to make it cheaper and/or faster: Moneygram, Western Union, OFX, HiFX, CurrencyFair, TransferWise, ...
Which is the cheapest service for the currency pair in which you're interested? How much do they charge?
