I sat and passed the exam on a Friday. Saturday afternoon IACRA had my info. I filled out everything. The temp cert was available shortly thereafter. The bummer is the Cetificate No. box says 'Pending'. I guess we have to wait for the card to arrive in the mail to have an actual Cert#. I suppose we could fly commercially for our own clients if we had any, but signing up for things like Dronebase seems not to be possible without the #.
When I get a contract job in my other career, a background check takes roughly 3 days. We're dealing with the federal government here though, so who knows.
According to Fred Garvin's link above (thank for that Fred) they are now processing roughly March 14th exams. That was a month ago. Makes more sense why we read that it takes at least 6 weeks to get the card.