Yes, Canada is ahead. On the other hand that email money transfer incurs a transaction fee from most banks.

What pisses me off is that we have a nearly ubiquitous way to send money in the physical world--a cheque. Yet, in the digital world we stumble to achieve the same.

I blame the profit driven corporations as each solution incurs a transaction fee and/or a proprietary solution with no interop with other systems.

My experience doing B2B money transfers: For those out of country I paid a $25-50 fee to do a wire transfer. Meanwhile bank transfers within Canada required a cash withdrawal (or bank draft), followed by a trip to the other bank to perform the deposit. Sigh.

Yet it's still slower and more expensive than sending a friend a photo of a physical filled-out cheque. Ridiculous.

edit: s/screenshot/photo/

I would feel a lot better about using email transfers if my bank had better security than my bloody smartphone, but as it stands my pin can't be any more complex than the pin to my smartphone. Canadian banking security is embarrassing, though I understand its not much better elsewhere.