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Faster payments was able to work because the UK gov forced them to do it. The UK has the advantage of having a few very large banks (unlike the US that had around 15,000 different banks). The government was able to get the dozen or so banks to work together and get same day ACH working.

It's also a "push" system (and not a "pull" system like ACH) which has serious advantages -- you can send money to anyone given their sort code and account number, and those numbers do not need to be kept private.

With ACH if you have someone's routing number and account number you can pull money from their account without them needing to authorise it.

In the UK there is also a 'pull' system (Direct Debit) in which you instruct your bank that a given third party can regularly take money out of your account until further notice.

It's commonplace for bill payments, subscription services, etc.

And should be noted that not anyone can receive direct debits so there still isn't a large need for secrecy of routing numbers.

Mexico allows to transfer money between bank accounts in seconds: http://www.banxico.org.mx/sistemas-de-pago/servicios/sistema...