South African banks say they have little choice but to charge extra for processing immediate electronic payments between clients of different banks.In a single year, banks process more than 49 million of these premium-rate transactions – but quite how much banks believe this extra computing power and risk should cost clients differs greatly. At the extremes, the difference between the cheapest and most expensive fees for these transactions is as much as R42.50, a difference of 147%.There are currently just two prominent types of online interbank payment systems in South Africa – traditional electronic fund transfers or EFTs, which can take money up to two business days to reflect in another bank account, and so-called immediate, or real-time clearing (RTC), payments, which transfer funds into any bank account within 60 seconds.

Source: Further Africa