Call P2P – person-to-person payments – the problem child of 21st century banking. Just about every expert thinks it should be the cool tool we all embrace to split lunch tabs, pay babysitters, send birthday gifts to nieces and yet almost none of us actually use any of the many available p2p tools.

But just maybe things are heating up as suddenly both Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv and archrival Jacksonville, Fla.-based FIS have made bold, optimistic statements about real-time P2P coming at you and your credit union.

A fact: usually several days pass before current P2P payments clear. Thus there's an absurdity in using it to, say, "settle" a lunch tab when the reality is that the person who pays the meal bill will get your share quicker if you give him $10 in cash tomorrow. Or the next day. And he doesn't have to hassle with redirecting money from PayPal or Popmoney or whatever into an ACH account.