Historically most banks have charged $1-$2 for an e-transfer (often with a limited number of free transfers per month, or a different type of chequing account one can sign up for to get free transfers), though it seems prices have been dropping in the past few years. Apparently the Bank of Montreal removed e-transfer fees on personal accounts a year or two ago.
So there's definitely still overhead that can make small transfers infeasible, but it's getting better.
CIBC has done the same. TD charges only $0.50 on the most basic plan and it is free on other plans. Simplii (née PC Financial) has always had free Interac e-Transfers. Interac fees have vanished or are vanishing for most people. The daily and weekly maximums are still an issue though ($3k and $10k at most banks usually).
Sweden have a thing called Swish which has instant transfer to anyone who you the mobile phone number of. End users have no fees when using the system to transfer to each others. Businesses that use it pay some though.
For domestic bank-to-bank payments, China has CNAPS https://www.bis.org/cpmi/publ/d105_cn.pdf [PDF] - the paper (2012) could be updated especially in regard to foreign currency.
tl;dr CNAPS is a bank-to-bank system, but in effect means domestic CNY transfers between major banks should settle within 30 minutes.
WeChat Pay / AliPay are a bit different, more like PayPal (though not completely like PayPal).
Nor is PayPal obliged to pay into deposit protection funds as EU banks are AFAIK. I think PayPal needs to start worrying about their standing in EU and becoming a collateral damage when France and Germany are on a roll to make a case for exercising currency sovereignty.
There is a function called "instant transfer" in my Raiffeisen ELBA app, it seems to be free and fast. (In Austria). However, I do not know how other banks handle thism