South Africa’s R0 monthly fee bank accounts compared

South Africans have six entry-level bank accounts to choose from that don’t come with any set monthly fee.

Improved digital capabilities have enabled existing big banks and new upstarts to offer banking services at very low costs.

That has brought many of the country’s previously unbanked citizens into the fold.

Of the four biggest banks in South Africa, FNB and Nedbank offer accounts that don’t charge any fixed monthly fee, regardless of whether you use them.

The remaining three options are from African Bank, Bank Zero, and TymeBank.

The latter has seen in growth surge in the past few years and was onboarding approximately 140,000 customers every month by the end of 2021.

TymeBank was the first to start offering a fully-fledged bank account with no monthly fee.

While the bank operates no branches of its own, it has leveraged partnerships with grocery chains to roll out a vast network of compact kiosks at their stores, offering typical banking services like withdrawals, deposits, and balance enquiries.

Instead of a monthly fee that guarantees some revenue for the bank, the charges on the accounts depend on how heavily clients use the account’s features.

However, it is important to be aware that many of these bank accounts have limited features compared to entry-level services with a nominal monthly charge.

The Nedbank Mobimoney and FNB Easy Zero accounts don’t support debit orders and only allow clients to make payments to bank-defined beneficiaries like DStv or a clothing retailer.

However, they do offer cash deposits, which cannot be said about Bank Zero’s account.

That limits customers to having their income deposited directly into the account or having to pay over money deposited with another bank.

However, that might not be a significant issue for those who rarely handle cash in their daily transacting.

Considering these restrictions, it is essential to carefully look at the features you get with each bank account before deciding which is best suited to you, rather than only considering the prices.

Among the zero-monthly fee bank accounts in South Africa, we found  African Bank’s MyWorld account, Nedbank’s Pay-as-you-use account, and the TymeBank EveryDay Personal account offered the widest range of capabilities.

That is when considering commonly-used services like withdrawals, cash deposits, debit orders, airtime purchases, and balance enquiries.

For an overview of the pricing of these basic services, we have compiled the tables below to compare the six monthly fee-free bank accounts in South Africa.

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