Nedbank has reduced some of its penalty fees by as much as 86 percent and no longer charges a fee to set up or change a stop order.
The changes, which will benefit individual and small business clients, came into effect on March 22.
Saks Ntombela, the managing director of Retail Product Solutions at Nedbank, says the penalty fees were plunging low-income earners further and further into debt.
Neville Melville, the Ombudsman for Banking Services, has been encouraging banks to reduce penalty fees.
On its Mzansi account, Nedbank has reduced its penalty fee by 86 percent - from R75 to R10 - for "honouring" a payment.
The bank charges this fee for honouring a point-of-sale transaction (for example, for a purchase at a shop) when the accountholder does not have sufficient funds in his or her account to cover the payment.
The penalty fees on Nedbank's recently launched Transactor and Market Trader accounts have been reduced by up to 28 percent. The Transactor account is a transmission account without a cheque book. The Market Trader account is a savings account.
The fee you are charged when you instruct the bank to stop a payment made from a Transactor or a Market Trader account has been reduced from R38.50 to R28.
Nedbank has cancelled stop order instruction fees on all its accounts for individual and small business clients. This means you are not charged a fee for setting up a new stop order, for changing a stop order, for cancelling a stop order or for auto transfers (a kind of internal stop order between two Nedbank accounts held by the same person).
Until March 21, you were charged R20 for these stop order transactions and R10 for auto transfers.
Ntombela says Nedbank encourages its clients to use their accounts wisely so that they pay lower bank charges.
You can reduce your costs by using cost-efficient banking channels, such as the internet, automated teller machines and credit cards, instead of transacting over the counter and issuing cheques.
Nedbank will adjust its account fee structures for 2006/7 in July.