If a sepa is anything like a wire transfer it WILL take days.  Not much you can do to expedite that, I don't think...

What is a better way to get FIAT into or out of bitcoin?

SEPA shouldn't take more than 3 business days.

The reason why Mt.Gox has such massive delays (not days but often weeks) is because their accounts have limits and having a lot more customers now, their withdrawal orders are queued.

Please, we need your help more than ever.  If you have anything useful to add, please do so now.

MAJOR NEWS:

http://www.zdnet.com/us-department-of-homeland-security-issues-court-order-against-mt-gox-7000015389/

Well, first and foremost: follow the laws.  People talk about MtGox like it's a big government crackdown, but I think the only reasons that they're cracking down is that a) bitcoins are getting popular and b) they didn't follow the laws for creating an exchange like that.  That's going to be an issue for any exchange that deals with the US currency.  If you want to be legit and not get shut down, this is a must.

After that's taken care of, I pretty much agree with Viceroy on the issues needed.  Secure and scalable are the key points.  There was an article in one of my business magazines recently about Netflix using a third of all the internet traffic during much of the time to stream videos, so scalability is definitely possible.  How do they do it?  Amazon web services.  I think this, or something similar, is the key to a successful exchange. 

AWS is a great system because from what I've heard it's basically infinitely scalable, you need more resources, simply allocate more to it.  But it's not trivial either, whoever runs this system would likely need a sysadmin or several to keep it running.  If the person people running the exchange is willing to put the time and money into figuring out AWS, however, I think they have a real good shot at making a system that's much more scalable and stable than MtGox.

Anything is possible - with the right business plan, contacts, and $$$ - it IS possible

Let's smoke