Transactions per credit card grew by 43.5%

Credit cards, BNPLs, and credit EMIs have significantly increased issue and use. Traditional banks and new start-ups are concentrating on attracting new clients by granting the unbanked/underserved population access to credit.

Credit Card Outstanding increased by 23.2 percent YoY in May of this year compared to April of this year and stood at 76.9 million. This growth continued to show improvement. Improvement in May 2022 was driven by Small Finance Banks' growth in the number of outstanding credit cards (1263%), while Private Banks recorded 26.1% YoY and Public Banks reported 21.6% YoY.

The number of transactions per card climbed by 43.5 percent YoY and by 4.3 percent MoM in May of this year, reaching 3.1 per card. The most transactions per card were made by South India Bank (5.9), followed by Citi Bank (5.3) and Federal Bank Ltd. (4.9).

In May 2022 there was a significant YoY growth of 76.8% for the volume of transactions as well as a significant MoM growth of 6.67%.

1.71 million new credit cards were introduced to the Indian banking environment. Some of the banks that had a significant number of new credit cards introduced to their portfolio included HDFC Bank (385K), Axis (215K), ICICI (212K), and SBI Bank (202K). While American Express, Citi Bank, and HSBC Bank witnessed a decrease in the number of outstanding cards, foreign banks like SBM Bank India (added: 192K) increased.

SBM Bank India and DBS are the two banks that have seen an increase in the number of outstanding credit cards, but large foreign banks see a decline in the number of cards. In the past three months, SBM Bank India has added about 511K cards to its portfolio, while DBS Bank has added about 11.94K cards.

On an MoM basis, the majority of banks have noticed an improvement in spend per card. Spending per card at DBS jumped by almost Rs. 4,108 from Rs. 3,827 in April to Rs. 7,935 in May.

In total, HDFC Bank (23 percent), Axis (13 percent), SBI, and ICICI Bank (12 percent) added almost 59 percent of the 1,711K new cards introduced in May'22 to their current Credit Card Portfolio. Around 696K cards were added together by other banks on May 2022.

Spend-per card in online commerce (Rs. 9,291) was 1.7 times greater than spend per card in physical stores (Rs. 5,498), and the number of transactions per card in online commerce was 1.51 as opposed to 1.59 per card in physical stores.

The biggest spend per card in online commerce was recorded by Indusind (Rs. 24,998), followed by Amex (16,792), South Indian Bank (13,744), Federal Bank (11,133), ICICI Bank (10,838), and HDFC Bank (10,837).

Some of the most popular brands in the online e-commerce market in terms of transactions per card were South Indian Bank (2.86), Federal Bank (2.45) Amex (2.5), and Citi Bank (2.42).