that's not universal! I have accounts with CapitalOne360 (formerly "ING Direct") and Wells Fargo that both have free electronic transfers to any other bank. They both use some sort of third-party system that sends an email to the recipient who has to enter their checking account routing info into a form. I use them regularly, and there's never been a problem.
Also the nice thing about banks is that they don't like to make mistakes, and are better about reversing errors than any other industry.
The only downside is that it takes about 3 days for money to move - apparently that's the speed that the checking network moves, but since paper checks have legal guarantees, the banks are willing to take the risk during that time - that's how you can cash a check and have it "bounce" after you've already withdrawn the procedes from it. Without the paper check, you just have to wait for the EFT system to do what it does (and the technology is old and weird - I think it was designed in the mainframe days - so it's all based on batches of processing, instead of on-line immediate stuff)
