Indians are getting more credit cards and swiping them too

Sep 5, 2023

By: Katya Naidu

Credit: Pixabay

​Healthy additions

More Indians are living on credit or at least they intend to. As many as 1.2 million new credit cards were issued in July as opposed to 0.9 million in June, as per a report by Emkay.

Credit: Pixabay

Credit cards

As many as 88.7 million credit cards are now in the system, as judged by Customer Identification Form or CIF numbers.

Credit: Pixabay

Spending escalating too

Credit card spends grew by 25 percent year-on-year and by 5 percent month-on-month to ₹1.5 lakh crore in July buoyed by healthy additions.

Credit: Pixabay

​Market leader unchanged

HDFC has the highest market share in credit cards — at 21 percent. SBI is close with 20 percent share followed by ICICI Bank with 17 percent. Axis Bank is at 12 percent, after Citi’s acquisition.

Credit: Business Insider

Where are the spends?

In terms of spends, HDFC and SBI lost some market share in recent months (27.2 percent and 17.9 percent respectively) While ICICI gained some to 17.8 percent.

Credit: Business Insider

​A credit card war?

Emkay believes that the war between most credit card issuers will intensify in the coming months.

Credit: Pixabay

​Boom to bust

The post-pandemic pent-up demand in terms of credit card additions have stabilised, leaving the card companies to try hard to bring more users and hence the war.

Credit: Pixabay

Festive fervour

Most card players are looking forward to the festive season to onboard new customers and accelerate spends and EMI growth. The new iphone 15 is launching soon too!

Credit: Pixabay

Asset quality intact

In spite of a few shocks with SBI Cards and RBL Bank’s gross non-performing assets recently, Emkay says that they are one-off cases, and “do not suggest any generalised weakening of asset-quality trends in the overall card business”.

Credit: Pixabay

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