There is no love lost among South African banks when it comes to the battle for market share. And this is not a fake fight like those of the WWE's WrestleMania - the stakes are real. Just like WrestleMania , however, banks are spending millions on marketing gimmicks and advertising to woo customers.Chris Steward, Investec Asset Management's head of equity research, said banks had increased their fight for primary clients because they had realised the importance of non-funded income - that is, income generated not from lending but from deposits and other transactional banking."There is also increased price competition in order to win primary client market share in South Africa," Steward said.story_article_left1Nedbank, which reported a 15.7% rise in headline earnings and a 17.3% return on equity in its half-year results this week, spent R750-million on marketing and public relations during this period, the bulk of which was utilised by its retail and business banking units.This resulted in the bank increasing the number of its primary customers - those who receive their salaries through the bank - by 8.2%. The group's total client numbers improved 5.8% to 7.3million.CEO Mike Brown declined to reveal from which rival his bank was poaching clients, saying: "It is incredibly difficult to work all that out."Nedbank is a market leader in the commercial mortgage loans sector, controlling 41.2%, according to Reserve Bankdata. Standard Bank's market share is 20.2% and Barclays Africa controls 12.9%, while FirstRand is in fourth place with 6.2%.Barclays Africa, which is playing catch-up with its peers after taking its eye off the ball, increased marketing spend by 23% to R722-million in the first half of this financial year.In the previous financial year, it spent more than R1.6-billion in total.These costs include sponsorship deals with the Springboks, the Premier Soccer League and advertising.Barclays Africa CEO Maria Ramos said the group's strategy was to re-energise its retail business.story_article_right2Overall, Barclays Africa customer numbers increased to 8.8million in the first six months of this year compared with 8.6million in the same period last year.Ramos said it would be "nice to say we are taking them from our competitors". She added that it all came down to being "focused".Barclays Africa boasted more than 11.7million customers in 2009, but a large number of them have dumped the bank over the years.FirstRand has spent millions trying to convince customers to switch to it, but it recently cut its advertising and marketing budget by 6%.FNB and WesBank's parent company revealed earlier this year that it had spent R722-million on enticing customers - down from the R767-million it revealed in June 2013.CEO Sizwe Nxasana said the group would spend "strategically" on marketing and advertising.This might have not been the best decision - its customer numbers fell from 7.6million to 7.1million in the year to December.Gordon Little, FNB's chief financial officer, said the change in customer numbers between June 2013 and June 2014 was largely due to a government social grant tender that was awarded to its rivals, resulting in a decrease of overall mass market customers.Little said the bank was focusing on cross-selling to existing customers, with the object of increasing its average products per customer.story_article_left3Standard Bank had 8.6million customers on its core banking platform in 2014 compared with about 7million the year before.Investec's Steward said FirstRand hadgained significant market share by being first off the block.Barclays Africa was going through a lot of "internal focus", and thus lost market share. Steward said the market had started to see some reversal of that as Barclays Africa fights back. He said the group had also underestimated the effect of not playing in the unsecured market and the ripple effect on its transactional banking market.Capitec, South Africa's youngest bank, has been attracting customers from the big four as it makes headway in the middle-income market after having focused on the low-income market. It has more than 6.2million active customers, up from 1.8million in 2009. It signs up 100000 new customers a month.Earlier this year, it reported a 6% increase in the number of branches for the year ended February.Unlike other banks, which have many balls in the air, primarily African expansion, Capitec focuses solely on South Africa...