Yes Bank has more shareholders than debit cards as retail investors continue to buy in

• Yes Bank has more shareholders than active debit cards, according to the latest data reported by the company.
  
• The lender’s non-institutional public shareholder base stood at 50.57 lakh at the end of the March quarter, while its total debit cards outstanding stood at 44.26 lakh.
  
• Its public shareholder base has increased by nearly 7 lakh in the last one year.
  

Yes Bank has more shareholders than active debit cards, according to the latest data reported by the company. The private sector lender’s latest shareholding data shows that its public shareholder base stood at 50.57 lakh at the end of the March quarter, up from 48.13 lakh in December.

On the other hand, the lender’s total debit cards outstanding stood at 44.26 lakh at the end of March this year. Essentially, its shareholders outnumber debit cards by 6.31 lakh.

According to the shareholding data, Yes Bank’s non-institutional public shareholder base has been on an upward trajectory for the past few quarters – it increased by nearly 7 lakh shareholders in the last one year, going from 43.62 lakh at the end of March 2022 to 50.57 lakh note.

Curiously, no other bank in the private sector has more shareholders than debit cards. Here’s a look at the banks with the highest and lowest ratio of shareholders to debit cards.


Source: ICICI Direct

Interestingly enough, Yes Bank’s stock has gained nearly 22% in the last one year. However, on a longer term basis, it is down 95% over the last five years. Most of the major decline happened in 2019 when the lender posted a surprise loss of ₹1,506 crore in Q4 FY19 – this was its first quarterly loss since FY 2005-06.

By March 2020, Yes Bank’s board of directors was superseded by the Reserve Bank of India after a bank run on the private sector lender. During this crisis, the bank’s stock fell nearly 48% in the first three months of 2020. Since then, it has been hovering between ₹15-25 per share.

UPI eating into debit card usage

The ubiquitous nature of UPI has had an adverse impact on both debit and credit card usage, but data from the Reserve Bank of India suggests that debit cards borne the bigger brunt of this.

“The data broadly suggests that the impact of UPI appears to be a lot stronger in hurting the growth of debit card transactions over credit cards at this point,” said a report by Kotak Institutional Equities.

It’s not just UPI that’s hurting debit card usage – even credit cards are eating into its market share across offline and online segments. The share of debit cards in offline transactions fell from nearly 60% in November 2020 to a little over 40% in November 2022. Its share in online transactions fell from nearly 35% to less than 20% during this period.

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