Festive time lifts credit card spends to a record

livemint.com:

₹1.78 trillion in October aided by strong festive season purchases on e-commerce platforms, latest Reserve Bank of India data showed. The spending had seen a dip in September as consumers prioritized saving ahead of big buys in the festive season. Total spending via credit cards jumped 38.3% year-on-year and 25.4% month-on-month in October.

Of this, spending at point-of-sale terminals grew 16% m-o-m to ₹57,774 crore and on e-commerce platforms grew 30% m-o-m to ₹1.2 trillion. Total spending on SBI credit cards rose the most by 42% m-o-m, whereas ICICI Bank and Axis Bank saw around 35% growth in spends on their credit cards. HDFC Bank lagged behind with a 17% m-o-m growth in card spends.

“Axis Bank numbers are much better this time as Citi cards are also part of the overall card spends," said a senior banker aware of the matter. “Much of the purchases happened in electronic, consumer durables and apparel segments, while travel didn’t much of spends this time to our surprise," he added. Within total spending, transactions on e-commerce platforms were more than those at PoS terminals in October.

“We believe this impact that payment gateways had in October will happen in November for PoS," said Mohit Bedi, co-founder, Kiwi, a fintech startup. Total cards in force rose to 94.7 million as on October 31 from 93.02 million as on September 30, an addition of 1.69 million cards during October. Card addition was led by ICICI Bank which added 359 lakh cards, HDFC Bank which added 3.56 lakh cards, Axis Bank 1.47 lakh and SBI 1.93 lakh cards.