The Reserve Bank has circulated the results of its most recent annual survey on bank fees, continuing an exercise it has carried out since 1997. The RBA reports that Australian banks' aggregate fee income increased at "a relatively slow pace" of 1.7 per cent in 2016, to around $12.7 billion, while "deposit and loan fee income continued to decline, relative to the value of products on which these fees are levied."The focus of the survey is on fee income generated through the provision of loans, deposit services and payment services.The latest report draws on data from 16 Australian banks (capturing 90 per cent of the Australian banking sector by balance sheet size.) with financial years ending in 2016."Greater use of electronic payment methods continued to support moderate growth in credit card and merchant service fee income," the bank's analysts said."Growth in fee income from credit cards slowed in 2016 to slightly below the average since 2010, but remains the largest component of fee income from households. The growth in fees was supported by continued take-up of credit cards, bundled with home loan packages." And on that side of operations, fee income from housing loans increased only slightly, consistent with slower growth in loan approvals over the year. Total fee income from businesses increased by 1.9 per cent in 2016, around the slowest pace for a decade, and not far ahead of the 1.5 per cent experienced by the retail side. The most important item here was the growth in merchant service fee income, which the RBA report said was "mainly attributable to increased transaction volumes, (up by 3.3 per cent, out of a total of around ten per cent for the decade) particularly for credit cards, due to wider acceptance of contactless payments."The Australian Bankers Association, which published its own bank fees report, said bank fees are now at a record low of 0.13 per cent of total household deposits. "The cost of transaction banking is falling very rapidly. It is estimated that transaction volumes increased by around 10 per cent this year, while the value of fees from transaction accounts changed very little. "Over the past eight years, fees on transaction accounts have fallen by 50 per cent while transaction volumes have increased by 69 per cent," the ABA said.