I've just tried to sign up someone for a steem account and there doesn't seem to be any reasonably straightforward, reasonably quick (say within 24 hours) way of doing this. Every process I've looked at so far (aside from the two week wait for a steemit inc account) involves another learning process - ie barrier - either buying some steem or other crypto or downloading an app like steem wallet or keychain.

I managed to resolve the problem for this person, but only by intervening personally and with help from steem.ninja in discord to find a manual fix. What was irritating is that there is nothing on steem.ninja's website or blog that explains that they are not taking credit/debit cards at present. It was an embarrassing shambles. I don't know if he has signed up, I wouldn't be surprised if it was too high a barrier to entry or he lost confidence in steem. This was after hours of work to explain steem and the potential to him.

Yes, he could have had one of my claimed accounts, but he preferred to go about things, privately and independently, in his own way. This is as it should be.

Regional leaders, ambassadors, outreach workers are going to need a simple way to sign up new people that doesn't involve them in holding keys to other accounts or placing pressure on new account holders over what username they want and having to make a decision there and then.