Credit card spends rise 38%, hit all-time high

financialexpress.com:

Credit card spends rose 38.3% year-on-year(y-o-y) to an all-time high of Rs 1.8 trillion in October aided by strong festival season spends.

The 38.3% y-o-y growth witnessed in October was the highest in nine months. Spends rose 25.4% month-on-month (m-o-m), which is the highest in two years.

Spend per card rose nearly 16% y-o-y to an all-time high of Rs 18,898 in October. It rose 23.2% month-on-month (m-o-m). “We have seen two big use cases. Around 65% of credit card spends occur online. The ticket sizes online tend to be much higher than the average,” BankBazaar.com Chief Executive Officer Adhil Shetty said, adding that features like no-cost EMI have also gained traction in recent times.

In October, online transactions rose 39% y-o-y in terms of volume, and 55.1% y-o-y in terms of value.

Specifically, spends on HDFC Bank credit cards rose 20.3% y-o-y to Rs 45,296 crore. SBI Card spends rose nearly 52% y-o-y to Rs 35,459 crore.

Axis Bank witnessed the highest annual growth in credit card spends. It rose 92% y-o-y to Rs 21,767 crore in October.

Total cards in force rose to 94.7 million as on October 31 from 93.02 million as on September 30. Cards-in-force rose 19.3% y-o-y in October.

Going ahead, experts feel that wider adoption of new products like RuPay credit card on unified payments interface(UPI) will lift overall spends further.