Nedbank has announced a new service that should be of particular interest to students.

The financial institution has revealed Unlocked.ME as its new service that allows students to open an account within 5 minutes via the Nedbank MyApp.

More importantly the Unlocked.ME bank account will not feature any monthly maintenance fees, according to Nedbank. Furthermore students will not be charged for swiping their cards, and will only incur fees when withdrawing cash.

“We developed Unlocked.ME as a way of partnering with SA’s youth to help them realise their potential to live full, exciting and rewarding lives,” explains Mutsa Chironga, managing executive for Consumer Banking at Nedbank.

“The account gives young people access to an array of lifestyle deals – for example up to 50% off laptops, and access to deals on the latest fashion and technology.  With an Unlocked.ME account, students can also enjoy benefits such as 100mb of data, food vouchers at outlets such as Debonairs and Nandos, including Taxify vouchers,” he adds.

While there are no monthly maintenance fees, a press release from Nedbank did point out some of the costs that will be associated with the Unlocked.ME account, with cash withdrawals costing R7 from ATMs and R2 from retailers.

Added to this will be charges for payments via the MyApp platform of R2.20, as well as a fee of R1 when buying airtime, data or prepaid electricity.

One of the other more interesting elements to this service is the career counselling that Nedbank will be offering students.

“In addition, we are passionate about helping students unlock their full career potential. We provide access to personalised, digital career advice based on the student’s matric results; and they can search up to 500 jobs online from a job portal specially designed for them,” concludes Chironga.