The useful version of this question is not how many days but what is happening on each of them. A cross border payment passes through a small number of distinct stages, and knowing which stage yours is in tells you whether to wait, to chase, or to check what you typed. This is the timeline, in order, with the delay that belongs to each step.
Stage one: accepted, not yet sent
When your app says the payment is submitted, the money has usually left your balance and joined a queue at your own bank. It has not gone anywhere. What happens here is validation of the beneficiary details, funding, and sanctions screening on your side. If you are inside the cut-off this stage lasts minutes to hours. If you are outside it, the payment simply waits for the next working day, which is why a payment can show as sent on Saturday and move on Monday.
Stage two: in the chain
The instruction now travels to the beneficiary bank, directly if the two institutions hold accounts with each other, otherwise via one or more correspondents. Each hop is a separate institution applying its own processing window, its own cut-off and its own screening. This is the stage where the published range comes from, and the stage that is invisible to you: your bank can trace a payment and find out where it is, but it cannot see the chain in advance.
Stage three: at the beneficiary bank
The receiving bank has to match the payment to an account. Where the IBAN and the name agree, this is quick. Where they do not, the payment goes to a repair queue and a human looks at it, which adds a day or more and sometimes ends in a return. This is why getting the beneficiary name right matters even though most corridors have no name check before sending: the check happens at the far end, after the money has travelled, rather than before it leaves.
Where it usually stalls, and what to do
Most stalls are a missed cut-off or a repair at the far end. Ask your bank to trace the payment, which produces a status from each institution that has touched it, and ask the beneficiary to check with their own bank, which will often see a payment sitting in repair that the sender's side cannot. Do not send a second payment to fix a first one: duplicates are far harder to unwind than a delay, and the original usually arrives.
Questions people ask about international bank transfer time
What does it mean when the payment has left my account but not arrived?
It is somewhere in the chain between the two banks. Your bank can trace it and tell you which institution holds it.
How long should I wait before chasing?
Past the top of your bank's quoted range for that corridor. Before that the payment is usually simply in progress.
Can the beneficiary see an incoming payment before it lands?
Sometimes. A payment sitting in a repair queue at their bank is often visible to them and not to you, which is why asking them to check is worthwhile.
Will sending again make it faster?
No, and it creates a duplicate that is much harder to recover than a delay. Trace the first payment instead.