MUMBAI: At Rs 1,04,081 crore, online credit card spends crossed the Rs 1-lakh-crore mark for the first time in March. Online card spends rose 20% from about Rs 86,390 crore in March 2023, and 10% from Rs 94,774 crore in Feb 2024.
Offline transactions (through point-of-sale machines) stood at Rs 60,378 crore in March, up 19% from Rs 50,920 crore a year ago. Total credit card spends in March 2024 stood at Rs 1,64,586 crore up 20% from Rs 1,37,310 crore a year ago.
Credit card spends hit record Rs 1L crore in March, up 20% in year
The number of credit cards in the country, which crossed 10 crore for the first time in Feb, ended March at 10.2 crore, up 20% from 8.5 crore a year ago.
At the end of the fiscal year, HDFC Bank had a market share of 20.2%, followed by SBI (18.5%), ICICI Bank (16.6%), Axis Bank (14%), and Kotak Mahindra Bank (5.8%). The top 10 card-issuing banks had a 90% market share of credit cards.
The increased card penetration has resulted in a surge in the volume of transactions. In March 2024, point-of-sale transactions rose 28% year-on-year to 18 crore in March, while online payments rose 33% to 16.4 crore. Transaction volume outpacing growth in value indicates that customers are increasinly using cards for low-value payments.
According to bankers, as card transactions have been made possible on UPI network, average value of transactions is likely to fall further.
Meanwhile, the popularity of UPI transactions has had a corollary impact, with a sharp dip in debit card payments. Debit card transactions dropped 30% in March 2024 to 11.6 crore in stores and 41% in online transactions to 4.3 crore. In value terms, debit card transactions were down 17% to Rs 29,309 crore and 16% to Rs 15,213 crore, respectively.