In Australia we've had free next business day transfers for as long as I can remember. Decades.

The transition to transfers that clear in seconds was happened gradually as bottlenecks were removed from the infrastructure one by one. Some transactions were instant a couple decades ago, but it's only in the last few years that most transactions are instant here.

These days, Visa/Mastercard are basically the slowest way you can pay someone. It's still the most commonly used option though, since it has the best fraud protection.