Best banks in South Africa
The banking retail sector is obviously large in South Africa with 4 banks leading the charge. Some of these banks are international and certainly all of them have correspondent relationships with several international banks. Therefore it would be interesting to get in touch with your own bank in your home country and see if it has such a relationship established and open your account before you even land.
- Standard Bank: being one of the largest in South Africa and having a rather long history of banking outside of the country, Standard bank offers a quality selection of services tailored to foreigners. Otherwise, they are a full fledged bank with a large network of branches and ATMs and overall have a high quality standard.
- Absa: This is one of South Africa's largest banks and as such has a full stack of products available to those seeking everyday banking. They have accounts for youths and students, travel accounts and multi-currency accounts which come with standards such as low monthly fees (waived in many cases) and debit cards. Click here for their network.
- Nedbank: this bank has a wide selection of products for both residents and non-residents. What makes it interesting is that loans are available to non-residents such as mortgages and car loans. They also have a full selection of banking services for investors and wealth management. Their ATM and branch network is here.
- Capitec: With over 700 branches and thousands of ATMs and more if you include partner networks, Capitec is a full service bank with offers for non-residents too. They have a pretty excellent online banking tool that you can perform most banking operations with and they also have multilingual phone customer service.
Overall, you won't be short of quality banking when you move to South Africa or even if you are a non-resident that regularly does business in the country. Banks will offer all the normal services including loans and financial advice and a full selection of credit cards with perks such as cashback and discounts.
When it comes to fees, these will vary greatly and that is why it is important to read the fine print and get the full story from your relationship manager. There could be fees that change overtime, fees to keep a debit card working and fees to take cash out of ATMs specially if abroad thanks to currency conversion.
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