Axis Bank, ICICI Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank outperformed rivals such as HDFC and SBI on various credit card metrics such as number of new cards issued and spending growth in July 2023.
While Axis Bank led in terms of number new cards issued, Kotak Mahindra Bank and ICICI Bank outperformed others in terms of spending growth.
Axis Bank is placed at No.4 in terms of total credit cards in issue in India. As of July end, it had 1.3 crore credit cards, compared to 1.8 crore cards issued by market leader HDFC Bank, 1.7 crore cards by SBI and 1.5 crore cards issued by ICICI Bank.
According to RBI data, the total number of cards issued grew by 1.3% in July to 90 million.
The data also revealed that per-card spending grew by 4.1%, while total spending on credit cards rose by 5.5% compared to June.
Axis Leads
In terms of growth, the best performer was Axis Bank, which saw a 1.8% jump in the number of cards in issue.
However, even as the number of card accounts increased, Axis Bank’s performance was below average on per-card expenditure on benchmarks such as per-card expenditure growth.
Another stand-out performer was Mumbai-based Kotak Mahindra Bank. Although the bank’s customer numbers are relatively on the lower side, its performance was remarkable on two parameters – per-card spending and total spending on cards.
Spending per card for Kotak Mahindra Bank grew 8.8% month-on-month and total spending grew 10.4% MoM.
Even on a year-to-date basis, total spending for Kotak Mahindra Bank grew faster than the sector at 32%.
The third biggest player in the market, ICICI Bank issued a number of cards that were in line with the sector average, but there was a substantial increase in spending per card month-on-month, potentially due to corporate spending.
Spending per card grew at a whopping 10.8% month-on-month, while total spending grew 12.2% month-on-month.
Meanwhile, the market leader, HDFC Bank, issued fewer new cards at 1% compared to its peers in July but its year-to-date growth in new cards remains higher than peers at 6%.
The second biggest player in the market, SBI reported growth in the number of cards outstanding stood at 1.2%. The total spends for credit cards for SBI Cards rose 3.9% while spends per credit card grew 2.7% compared to July.
IndusInd Bank was the only bank that saw a month-on-month decline of 0.2% month-on-month in spending per card, but total spending grew by 1.4% month-on-month.