Ah yes, outcomes like payments taking over a day to go through and people not being able to receive unemployment.
> payments taking over a day to go through
That's due to the protocol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACH_Network "when a real-time transfer is required, a wire transfer using a system such as the Federal Reserve's Fedwire is employed instead".
> people not being able to receive unemployment
That's probably not due to the mainframes. https://slate.com/technology/2020/04/new-jersey-unemployment... That's probably an administration issue. https://www.citylab.com/equity/2020/04/unemployment-benefits...
and
http://publibfi.boulder.ibm.com/epubs/pdf/dz9zr011.pdf
Should pretty much cover it :)
Edit: missed http
Consider that when you swipe your credit card and get payment approved in a store, that’s a round trip to the mainframe back at Visa HQ. Or when you withdraw cash from an ATM. Mainframes are perfectly capable of near-real-time operations at massive scale. The problems you mention are not technological.