SEPA was designed to lower transfer fees between european countries to those of domestic national transfers which are not free, even same bank to bank transfer has a fee in place so I really don't know which bank you're using with free transfers. Also 4 days is not fast(friday, sat, sunday, monday) unless you live before 18th century when money was moved using horse carriages, in those times 4 days is pretty fast I agree.
Right.
I have a UK bank account and a German bank account.
To send via SEPA using my German bank account, it is same day, and costs nothing.
To send via SEPA using my UK bank account, it costs me around 4% premium on the total I sent if I want it there next banking day. This is fucking expensive true enough, which is why I get money onto Bitstamp (or I used to do it b4 Bitstamp started requesting anal probes), by sending funds to my German account via Transferwise (0.5%) fees or less if I am prepared to wait, and then transfer the funds from my German account to Bitstamp for free using SEPA. I don't use Transferwise or any of the other cheaper money transfer options to fund Bitstamp account directly, because they are prohibited from allowing transfers to Bitcoin exchanges.
I cannot think of any possible circumstances where it would be too my advantage to send Bitcoin other than Fiat currency to anyone abroad. For any currency in any developed or economically powerful nation, Transferwise or similar services can be used to send funds from as little as 0.25% fees. For sending funds to some 3rd world nation, what fkn good is Bitcoin going to be to anyone in Tanzania anyway? Even if there was a means of exchanging the Bitcoin, for Fiat that can actually be spent, the premiums would be fucking horrendous.