Credit card spending tops Rs 1.13 lakh in May Cr: RBI data

The monthly increase in spending on cards points to a pick-up in economic activity.

The latest Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data showed that 7.68 billion credit card holders spent about Rs 71,429 billion on online purchases, while the amount spent by swiping at point-of-sale (PoS) machines was at Rs 42,266 crore in May .

In terms of the number of transactions, credit card payments were marginally lower online at 11.5 billion versus 12.2 billion offline or at POS machines.

The trend also shows that, on average, cardholders make higher value transactions online than offline.

Credit card holders spent Rs 65,652 crore on online purchases while the amount spent through point-of-sale (PoS) machines was Rs 39,806 crore in April.

As for the debit card, spending through PoS and online combined during the month was Rs 65,957 crore.

Spending via PoS was Rs 44,305 crore against e-commerce spending of Rs 21,104 crore via debit card in May.

About 20 lakh credit cards were added during the month. The card figure was 7.51 crore in April.

HDFC Bank had the highest number of credit cards in May at 1.72 billion since the RBI lifted its ban on new credit card issuance in March.

In credit cards, HDFC Bank was followed by State Bank of India (1.41 bn) and ICICI Bank (1.33 bn) at the end of May 2022.

RBI imposed a ban on HDFC Bank in December 2020, urging the lender to halt all launches of its forthcoming digital business-generating activities and sourcing of new credit card customers after repeated outages at its data center impacted operations.

The ban was partially lifted in August last year and fully lifted in March this year.