Even now transactions with less than 0.01 BTC will never get confirmed(or it will take longer)
I have never paid 0.01 fee and my transactions have always confirmed without problems.
According to
https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ you need a fee of 0.00049BTC for the transaction to confirm in the first block, but if you pay less, like 0.0004, it still should confirm within 2-3 hours, which is fine for most people and faster than a bank transfer.