Wow. I did not know international transfers were that complicated.
Things like this is why more people should worry about opponents to bitcoin.
Clearly there are a lot of people in that chain making vast amounts of money and they stand to lose a lot if bitcoin adoption really takes hold.
So all these people have a clear motivation to do whatever they can to stop the adoption of bitcoin.
I've been saying it all along. This is the kind of thing that starts wars.
They can't stop it anymore. It has already grown over their head. People involved in banking will adopt the better system (bitcoin) and build services around it (for example escrow).
Banks that start a war against bitcoin can only loose (reputation and customers). It's wiser to adapt to the new situation.
The only way they are going to make as much money as they do now with bitcoin is by speculating it in. Which generally isn't how this particular sector makes money. They make money by being the middleman. And in bitcoin there is not much room for middlemen.
Banks can still provide some services though. Think about how banks made money early on, before electronic anything. Escrow, secure storage, currency exchange, lending. All of these things are still needed services, even in the age of digital money.
Certainly, the inability to charge for transactions (at least to the extent that they have in the past) will be eliminated, but at the same time, they won't need the same sort of manpower for performing transactions either, so they can cut costs. It won't be as lucrative a market as it has been, but they'll find ways to make money, and maybe some people will move to other industries entirely.