How much more you’re paying for banking fees in South Africa: 2019 vs 2024

Middle-market bank account holders in South Africa have mostly been spared significant hikes in transaction fees over the last five years – but higher-end accounts haven’t been as lucky.

BusinessTech looked at how banking fees have changed between 2019 and 2024, finding that at least three of the country’s major banks have managed to keep pricing contained, even reducing it in one case.

However, two of the banks saw bigger spikes in pricing over the period – and all the banks hiked charges when it comes to premium accounts.

For the comparison, we used the Solidarity Research Institute’s (SRI’s) annual Banking Charges reports for 2019 and 2024.

Solidarity’s banking fee comparison is based on four different transaction profiles split across four groups.

The report aims to give consumers a look at the transaction account options that the largest banks in South Africa offer them.

However, we focused on the 25 and 30 profiles aligned with middle-market and premium accounts, respectively.

Solidarity’s report only examines the accounts of the so-called ‘legacy banks’, which include Capitec, Nedbank, FNB, Standard Bank, and Absa.

Solidarity added that Discovery Bank had not been included in this year’s (2024) report because many of the transactions in its basket are not indicated on its fees page.

The transactions and the fees associated with each bank offering are included in the infographic below.

The SRI said that based on cost, Capitec is the clear winner in the banks’ middle market offerings.

This is especially true if we assume that consumers in this category have a balance that earns interest in their transaction accounts for at least part of the month.

However, from 2019 to 2024, Capitec has hiked its fees by over 30%, which is even higher than the 23.1% inflation over the five-year period.

When we look at banks with a proper value proposition, FNB is once again the cheapest. This is again owing to the comprehensive list of costs included in the monthly fee of R99.

Only the purchase of electricity brings an extra cost of R3. In second place is Nedbank, which was in last place last year.

SRI said that at Nedbank, all transactions on the report’s list, except sending cash to a cellphone number, are included in the monthly fee of R99.

Notably, both FNB and Nedbank cut their prices between 2019 and 2024, decreasing their fees by 7.2% and 20.6%, respectively.

However, the picture shifts when looking at the 30 transactions from middle-to-high-income accounts; it shows that all banks increased their fees.

Standard Bank and Absa saw the steepest increases in their fees over the period, at 33% and 26.4%, respectively.

When comparing their offerings, Nedbank’s Migoals Premium account appears to be the most expensive among these accounts, with a standard monthly fee of R240, compared to R230 per month for the other three banks.

However, as all transactions on the SRI list are included in that amount, it actually comes in as the cheapest.

SRI mentioned that sending money to a cellphone number and buying electricity are the only services that incur extra costs apart from the monthly fees on the FNB account, which comes in second cheapest.

The table below shows the price change of 25 transactions across the major banks and their med-tier (middle-income) bank account offerings over the past five years.

The table below shows the price change of 30 transactions across the major banks and their high-tier (middle-high income) bank account offerings over the past five years.

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