Joking aside, sure, crypto would be a great solution if they were already using it. They weren't however, and trying to introduce someone half-drunk and in a party vibe to crypto is not a good idea.
If I had asked them to use crypto afterwards I would just have imposed a lot of extra work on them, which wouldn't be nice considering they did me a service by lending to me and blindly trusting me to send it back.
Getting set up on an exchange is challenging these days, at least in the US. I didn't know if there were better options that people there in Scandinavia were using, sounds like no.
It's sad, because once you have crypto in an exchange it is super simple to send to an address, and the current exchange rate is easy to see. Seems like it solves your problems in that no one would need to use one of the different and incompatible banking systems. I'm sort of surprised the cost of signing up for a crypto exchange makes the banking system still a consideration.
It's an interesting place you are in, highly mobile within Europe, with the financial system getting more complicated when you travel within it.
Crypto's could do this. They just aren't set up as easy right now. I'm pointing at bitcoin etc. They are also slow. I can tap my MasterCard contactless card/phone and pay for coffee and the merchant is happy. I've had bitcoin take >30 minutes to transfer. Unacceptably slow.
In my EU country, there are already six banks that let you do this, and I doubt we're pioneers.
In the example provided I’m sending my pal BTC for some shared purchase because there’s no cash.
My friend didn’t have a BTC address / wallet or whatever, now they do, and I’ve just transferred them 0.0028 BTC to cover my share of lunch.
Now what?
edit: auto complete filled in butcoin, corrected. Not sure how that got in my dictionary!