ATHIRA VARIER
Mumbai, 26 February
The gap between the number of credit cards issued by HDFC Bank and SBI Card widened to 1.5 million at the end of January 2024, from about 1 million cards a year back, data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) showed. HDFC Bank — the largest credit card issuer — achieved record 20.10 million cards in circulation at the end of January 2024, in comparison to 19.88 million in December 2023. Meanwhile, SBI Card, the second-largest issuer, had 18.60 million cards in force as of January 2024. The gap between these card issuers has been widening since August 2023 — it was around 0.73 million in August. The total number of credit cards in circulation was 99.5 million in January 2024, steadily rising from 979 million in December 2023. In the past year, the total credit cards in force (CIF) increased by around 17.1 million cards from 82.4 million. Among other key credit card issuers, ICICI Bank’s CIF rose to nearly 16.80 million and Axis Bank to 13.75 million, as of January 2024. Credit card spending of the industry increased to%1.66 trillion in January 2024 from .65 trillion in December 2023 on the bank of healthy growth in point of sale (PoS) and ecommerce transactions. Transactions under PoS rose to 358,531.77 crore from %58,300.18 crore in December 2023, and e-commerce payments inched up to ¥1.08 trillion crore from .07 trillion in December 2023. Value of transactions of the leading credit issuers showed a mixed trend with the industry leader HDFC Bank clocking a moderation in the value to343,711.47 crore in January from 344,771.87 crore in December. SBI Card’s credit card increased to ¥30,693.83 crore from ₹29,249.29 crore. ICICI BanK’s card transactions value rose to ₹29,672.96 crore from 28,213.32 crore between December 2023 and January 2024.
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