Banks say that you can always access money that you have forgotten in a savings account and you will be paid any interest you should have earned even after the account has been closed.
The time which must lapse before banks consider an account dormant varies.
At Nedcor your account is considered dormant after six months of inactivity, at NBS it is one year, at FNB and Absa it is two years and at Standard Bank it is between one and three years depending on the type of savings account.
Erik Larsen, a spokesman for Standard Bank, says after a year of no transactions taking place, the bank will try to contact you.
"After a further two years, we again try to contact the customer and if unsuccessful we close the account and transfer it to (the bank's) unclaimed balances (account)," he says.
"Any amounts transferred to unclaimed balances are claimable by customers even after 20 years," and you will receive the interest that you would have earned had your account not been closed.
Ann Bramhill, spokesperson for First National Bank, says after about five years the money that is held in the bank's suspense account from dormant savings accounts is absorbed into the profits of the branch.
This does not mean that you will be left out of pocket if you turn up on the bank's doorstep 30 years later.
The bank will have a record of the amount you left in your savings account and will pay you this and interest that you would have been entitled to when you come to claim it.
Bramhill says it is impossible to say how much money is left in dormant accounts or how much of this money is in the bank's suspense accounts.
An Absa spokesperson says if an account is inactive for six months, you will be sent a letter, but you can still transact from the account.
If your account has not been used for two years, you will be contacted by letter again and if there is no response or the accounts is not activated, the money in it will be transferred to a suspense account.
You can claim these funds and the interest will be backdated to when the money was removed from you account, she says.
The banks all deny that they penalise you if you use your account infrequently.
Standard Bank says there is no interest penalty for infrequently used accounts, but if the balance drops below the minimum requirement, there is a monthly maintenance fee of R5 on PlusPlan accounts and R2,70 on E-Plan accounts.