MUMBAI: Credit card outstanding jumped by a hefty 25.6% on-year to 2.57 lakh crore by the end of March 2024 from 2.04 lakh crore in March 2023, according to the latest credit data from the RBI released on Tuesday.
In March 2022, the credit card outstanding had stood at Rs 1.54 lakh crore, which rose by 32.5% this year, as of this March, the central bank said.
Meanwhile, overall bank credit too fared well clipping at 20.2% this March at Rs 164.34 lakh crore over 136.75 lakh crore in March 2023 and at Rs 118.91 lakh crore in March 2022, which was a growth of 15%.
On the other hand, the total number of credit cards crossed the 10 crore mark as to reach 10.2 crore by the end of March, indicating a 20% increase from the previous year’s 8.5 crore.
The credit card market is led by the top 5 players controlling as much as 90% of the segment. HDFC Bank, which has been the market leader for decades, continues to rule the sector with 20.2% market share, which though is down from a tad over 24% before the RBI had asked to stop onboarding new customers in December 2020 for the bank’s poor IT infra.
The second largest player is SBI Cards with 18.6%, making it also the largest pure-play player. With 16.7%, ICICI Bank is the third largest, followed by Axis Bank with 14% market share and Kotak Mahindra Bank with 5.8% of the pie.