Recently I had to transfer a certain amount from my ICICI bank account to my Citibank one, and EFT (electronic fund transfer) is usually the more convenient mode, letting you transfer where-ever you have a stable Internet connection. But its still not real time, and you still have date and time constraints. EFT still take anywhere between 1-3 days.

Why you ask? RBI rules, because at the operational level, its still a manual process. Imagine a scenario when you urgently wanted money to be transfered to an alternate account. One may argue that these checks are counterfeiting measures, but you can always use technology to your advantage. True EFT is when the inter-bank  transfers happen in real-time, until then I’ll play the waiting game the old way.