Credit cards-in-force, spends touch record high in July after dipping in June

After a temporary decline in June, credit card spends scaled new highs in July, growing 5.5 per cent and breaching the previous record of ₹1.41 lakh crore worth of spends in May 2023.

Spends for July were at ₹1.45 lakh crore, with most major issuers registering an increase in spends during the month, according to information by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Spends had declined by 2.4 per cent in the previous month.

As per the data, 65.7 per cent of the credit card spends during July were for e-commerce payments, an increase from 64 per cent last month. On the other hand, the share of PoS (point-of-sale) transactions fell to 34.3 per cent from 36 per cent in June.

HDFC bank leads

Of the top 4 issuers, ICICI Bank saw the highest increase in spends by far, growing 12.2 per cent to ₹25,857 crore. HDFC Bank, State Bank of India and Axis Bank saw card spends rise by 2-5 per cent.

HDFC Bank continued to lead in terms of spends, which stood at ₹39,403 crore for the month. SBI crossed ICICI Bank in monthly cards spends in June and maintained its second position in July.

Other large issuers such as Bank of Baroda, Union Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Federal Bank also saw significant increase in their credit card spends in July.

Monthly credit card spends crossed the ₹1 lakh crore mark nearly 1.5 years ago. Total credit cards spends in FY23 were ₹14.3 lakh crore, 47 per cent higher year-on-year.

Card additions

Card additions for the month remained steady, increasing by 1.3 per cent on-month in July compared with 1.1 per cent in June. The industry net added 11.9 lakh cards during the month, higher than 9.4 lakh cards in June but lower than the net additions of over 12 lakh credit cards each in April and May.

Total cards-in-force stood at 8.99 crore at the end of July. Credit cards-in-force as of March 2023 were at 8.5 crore, up 15.9 per cent for FY23.

Axis Bank led in terms of the increase in number of cards, net adding 2.30 lakh cards during the month to a total of 1.25 crore cards as of July 2023. This was a sharp jump from the previous month when Axis Bank net added only 41,019 cards as against 1.96 lakh cards in May.

It was followed by SBI which net added 2.07 lakh cards to a total of 1.76 crore cards. HDFC continued to maintain its position as the largest card issuer with cards-in-force at 1.85 crore, an addition of 1.91 lakh cards on month. ICICI Bank net added 1.86 lakh cards to a total of 1.50 crore cards.