MUMBAI: The total number of credit cards declined by 22.6 lakh on a net basis to 78 million in August this year from over 80 million in the previous month. reserve Bank of IndiaRegulation that requires lenders to deactivate cards that have not been in use for a year. Biggest drop recorded HDFC bank And axis Bank,

While the drop in numbers can be attributed to the RBI directive, the industry saw a month-on-month decline in overall spending in August – down 3% from July. “This is largely due to the implementation of the new RBI norms. This should affect other players (eg.) SBI Card And ICICI Bank) as well with a gap,” said Suresh Ganapathy, head of financial research at Macquarie Capital.

Total credit as per data released by RBI card Expenditure on shops (point of sale terminals) stood at Rs 44,943 crore in August as against Rs 41,766 crore in July. However, online spending on cards declined to Rs 67,414 crore in August from Rs 74,089 crore in the previous month.

“The new norms that require the 365-day inactive cards distort the market share picture (in terms of number of cards) as different players implement it with lag. So, in the interim, we have There will not be a clear picture on the market shares.However, depending on the card spend, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank and State Bank Of India “The card has gained market share of 50-70 basis points (100 bps = 1 percentage point) in August, while ICICI Bank has lost 230 bps,” Ganpati said in his report. spends — and therefore it is difficult to draw conclusions on retail market shares on the basis of expenses alone,” he said.

In August, SBI Card added around 3 lakh cards on a net basis, which is more than the growth of the industry. “We believe that the new ‘Cashback SBI Card’ (issued in late August) can help them further their market share in the festive season. SBI Card has earlier reported that its 90-95% The cards are 365-days active, and therefore in our view, the impact of the implementation of the new RBI norms should be limited to 5-7% of the cards. This should be reflected in the cards reported outstanding in the next two months,” the report said. has gone.