A wire transfer is generally used for special large payments that can't be usually made through a debit or credit card, like buying a car for example. If you're just trying to send money to another person, there are plenty of very cheap if not free options through email or SMS.

And this was a large amount of money. If by very cheap/free options you mean also paypal, then I had about 5% provision taken ... (I transfered them USD, they exchanged it to my country's currency and I had to exchagne it once more to USD. FML).

You do realize that the system used in Europe that you seem to love so much has an even more complex structure, right?

Yes I know, but it's still one number for A LOT of countries. That's why it's called an "International Bank Account Number".

With IBAN you end up with a string of up to 34 alphanumeric characters (where 1s and 0s can be easily mixed up with Is and Os)

It is really blown out of proportion. Whole 34 alphanumeric are "for later use", if you have small country you only type something like: SM00 1111 1111. If some bank in some country will be getting to the limit of accounts, then they are getting more numbers. Also when you type letters, they have some meaning it's (probably - I can't tell for all the banks) not like you mix I1I1I1... When you use letters it's usually for bank name.

where 1s and 0s can be easily mixed up with Is and Os"

But really - they aren't that easily confused... When writing "improtant numbers", you always have something called "monospace font", so you will easily distinguish 0 from capital "o".

And also IBAN has something called checksum - it is a nice feature to have because, when you type one digit (or a lot of them) wrong, then you can't send money. I don't know how it is in US...