You may feel, as I do, that putting your money in the bank and allowing it to use it for lending to other people at interest should provide the bank with enough profit not to charge you anything for safekeeping.
But that is not the case. Banks also charge you every time you put cash in your current account, take it out, and even just for looking at it. Soon they will find a way to charge you for thinking about it.
The subject of how much banks charge for withdrawals of cash is vast and ever-changing. It depends on when you ask, where you withdraw, how much money you are withdrawing and what your status is.
For most current accounts, withdrawals at your own bank's ATM cost between R1 and R2,50 a transaction. If you draw from other banks' ATMs, you pay extra.
Banks try to discourage you from taking money from your savings account so those withdrawals can be more expensive than withdrawals from cheque accounts.
Drawing money over the counter is even dearer than using an ATM probably because the long-term aim of the banks is to reduce customers dependence on bank branches to the minimum. At one bank, the costs of drawing over the counter on certain accounts is more than double that of using an ATM.
The only way to keep up to speed on what you are paying is by scrutinising your bank statements, asking your branch or keeping an eye on free brochures at branches.
When drawing cash you should balance the costs of making small, frequent withdrawals against the chance of getting robbed of large amounts.
Some people think that drawing R20 out of an ATM at a time is going to restrain them from being extravagant but they should look at their bank statements to see how much they have wasted in bank charges.
The other extreme is to think you can do without cash entirely.
Spokesmen from two of the banks said the world is moving towards a cashless society but there are some places where it is a necessity when buying from street hawkers or flea markets, for example, though increasingly stallholders at some of the flea markets are taking credit cards.
There are occasions on which you can negotiate a discount when paying by cash. The benefit of the discount will probably far outweigh the costs of withdrawing the money, with the proviso that you run the risk of carrying large sums of money around with you.
Standard Bank says customers are showing an increasing need to use electronic transactions not only instead of cash but also instead of cheques. Electronic transactions include being able to link a number of accounts, like your telephone or electricity account, to your ATM card and then paying those accounts using a Standard Bank Autoplus machine, AutoBel, Toni Bank-by-Phone or Bank-by-Fax, StanCall or the Standard Bank internet web site.
First National Bank offers similar facilities and adds that telephone banking is the answer for those who don't like doing transactions in front of an ATM, so FNB offers a service called DirectLine which will pay accounts and so on from your telephoned instructions to a personal consultant. There is an FNB internet site as well.
That seems like quite a large leap for bank users who are still dependent on cash. They will probably progress first to an increasing use of cheques, which will be covered in detail next week.