NAB been at the forefront of customer-focused banking in recent years and has won a number of awards for slashing bank fees and introducing free email and SMS alerts for bills.

Last year the bank won a Canstar Innovation Excellence Award for stepping away from the usual bank practice of allocating credit card repayments to the balances attracting the lowest interest first.

By allocating repayments to the debt that attracts the highest interest instead they are enabling customers to pay off their most expensive debt first.

NAB has eight different competitively priced credit cards in its portfolio to choose from covering all the major categories of card including low rate, low annual fee, balance transfer, reward, platinum and both Qantas and Velocity frequent flyer.

As well as the security of knowing that your most expensive balances will be paid of first, NAB also charge among the lowest of the additional fees and charges that come with most credit cards.

As part of the Australian Government Banking Reforms that come into force in July 2012 banks will no longer be allowed to charge over limit fees on their credit cards.

NAB has already abolished these fees, plus they have also reduced the late payment fee for credit cards to $5, and there is no fee for replacement cards.

At 1.75% of the cash amount their cash advance fees are also among the most competitive.

Annual fees start at $30 for a number of the cards and these are waived if your card is part of select product packages.

On balance transfers, any unpaid amount at the end of the balance transfer period is charged at the purchase interest rate and not the cash advance rate, something that isn’t common practice on all balance transfer cards.

It’s no surprise then that of the big four banks NAB consistently comes out on top in customer satisfaction surveys.

But if all that isn’t enough tempt you, there are a couple of credit card specials just now that look good, and with the NAB’s reputation for honest banking you can pretty much be guaranteed that if they look good they probably are good.

Two cards in their portfolio are currently offering balance transfers for an introductory rate of 1%; the NAB low fee card is offering the rate for six months and the NAB gold card for 12 months.

The NAB low rate card is also offering purchases for the first year at a very low 2.99%.

With the NABs innovative approach to the allocation of debt repayment and low fees these offers are at least as good as some introductory balance transfer offers with a zero interest rate.