According to the reports of March, the number of credit card holders has fallen. The number has gone below the 20 million mark and is presently at 18.3 million.
The report acknowledging this reduction has been released by the Reserve Bank of India. The previous fiscal saw a big portion of 6.04 million cards stopped circulation. This number excludes approximately 3.61 million credit cards which were cancelled in 2008-09.
The economic crisis had greatly affected the unsecured portfolios like credit cards and personal loans. The biggest credit card issuer, ICICI Bank reduced its credit card base from 8 million to 5 million. The bank also halted offering life time credit cards.
But HDFC Bank still issues 70-80,000 cards per month. HDFC Bank has the 2nd biggest credit card network in the country as of March 31.
But now issuers are concentrating on hiking the card spend per card instead of hiking their figures. The monthly credit card spending of Standard Chartered Bank has gone up from Rs 250 crore last year to Rs 400 crore. Shyamal Saxena, GM retail banking at StanChart said, “We are aiming for a target of Rs 500 crore per month soon. Ours is a highly rewards-driven programme, concentrating on what works with customers”.