Credit card spending grows 26% MoM in October; UPI continues to outperform in digital payments, transaction volume up 104%

Driven by schemes and offers on credit cards during the festive season, credit card spending grew significantly in October. The receivables per card lagged spends but reached pre-covid levels as credit card (CC) spending grew strongly by 26% MoM in Oct’21, said an ICICI Direct research report.  

"The traction is evident from the record absolute CC spend of Rs1trillion during the month and the ratio of ‘credit card to debit card’ spend, which stands at 1.32x now (the highest since Apr’19)," said the report.  

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Talking of projected November CC spending, the report underlines that current trend suggest that spending may remain flattish in November.  

SBI Cards (SBIC) reported 59bps MoM gain in Oct’21 spends market share after three consecutive months of decline.

Furthermore, CC spend per transaction increased 8% MoM in Oct’21 for industry vs 14% MoM for SBIC, it said. SBIC spend per card came in at Rs4,455 vs average of Rs3,811 witnessed between Apr’21-Sep’21.

UPI continues to outperform

As per the same report, the UPI continues to outperform in digital payments. "UPI market share, in terms of digital payments (which includes NEFT, IMPS, UPI, credit cards and debit cards), has increased from 8.1% in Jan’20 to 11.7% in Mar’21 and 20.3% in Oct’21," said the report.

The ratio of UPI spends to CC spends has continued to gradually increase from 3.24x in Jan’20 to 6.97x in Mar’21 and 7.6x in Oct’21. In volume terms, UPI transactions grew 104% Oct’21.

Ticket size of payments to merchants grew 34% YoY to Rs877, while overall ticket size declined 2% YoY to Rs1,829. Within UPI, the value market shares of Google Pay and PhonePe remain at 36.4% and 46.3% respectively, as of Oct’21.