Thanks for your comment and sharing your experience @ivars. From your comment, this is my understanding that during the signup process, you received only sms code (No email verification). Then, after 4 days you received email from steemit to inform you that your account is approved. Please let me know, if I got it right.
My friends and family members, whom I introduced to Steemit and still waiting for approval after couple of weeks without any email confirmation or verification from steemit.
First they sent me an email with a link I had to click to verify, then I had to give them a phone number and they sent me an sms to my phone with a code I had to enter on a web page, then they said they would send me an email when I was approved. It was that last approval that took 4 days. It was more involved, cumbersome, and time consuming than setting up access to my bank account.