Credit card transactions rose nearly 18% year-on-year (y-o-y) to Rs1.57 trillion in April, data from the Reserve Bank of India showed. Overall card spends were a tad lower than the Rs 1.65 trillion reported in March.
Average spends per card fell 5.5% month-on-month (m-o-m) to Rs 15,307 in April. Compared to the year-ago period, the decline in average spends per card was 0.5%.
Credit card spends in April were driven by an increase in online transactions. Transactions on e-commerce platforms rose 16.5% y-o-y to Rs 94,516 crore in April, while spends at point of sale terminals increased 20% y-o-y to Rs 61,982 crore. Cash withdrawals at automated teller machines (ATM) clocked nearly Rs 458 crore.
The number of outstanding cards rose 18.5% y-o-y to 102.5 million as on April 30, against 101.8 million as on March 31.
In April, the Reserve Bank of India directed Kotak Mahindra Bank to stop onboarding new customers through its online and mobile banking channels and issuing fresh credit cards due to serious deficiencies and non-compliances in its technology infrastructure. Despite this, the bank’s market share in credit card spends improved marginally to 4.5% as on April 30 from 4.4% as on March 31. The lender’s share stood at 4.1% in February, and 3.7% a year ago.
Kotak Mahindra Bank’s outstanding cards market share rose to 5.9% as on April 30 from 5.8% as on March 31. The market share stood at 6% in February and 5.8% a year ago.
HDFC Bank remained the market leader in both, outstanding cards and card spends. However, its spends market share fell to 26.1% in April from 28.6% a year ago, while the cards market share fell to 20.3% in April from 20.7% a year ago.
While ICICI Bank occupied the second spot in terms of market share in spends, State Bank of India(SBI) was second in terms of card issuances.