Credit card spending online Rs 30k cr higher than swipes in March: RBI data

Credit card spending online was nearly Rs 30,000 crore more than the spending done through swipes at points of sale in March, indicating an increased preference among people for e-commerce purchases.

Latest data from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) showed that 7.3 crore credit card holders spent about Rs 68,327 crore for buying online while the amount spent through swipes at Point of Sale (PoS) machines stood at Rs 38,377 crore in March.

For the first time, the RBI has provided separate data on spending through online versus PoS payments.

In terms of the number of transactions, credit card transactions were marginally lower online at 11 crore as against 11.1 crore offline or at PoS machines.

The trend also indicates that cardholders are making higher value transactions online on an average than through offline means.

Overall, spending through credit cards was over Rs 1 lakh crore in March. In value terms, the cardholders spent Rs 1,07,100 crore through online and PoS spending.

As far as cash withdrawal through credit cards is concerned, it stood at Rs 343.71 crore during the month, as per the data.

Further, more than 19 lakh credit cards were added in March, the highest for a month in FY'22, taking the total number to 7.36 crore at the end of the financial year.

HDFC Bank had the highest number of credit cards at 1.67 crore in March even though the lender had faced a ban on issuance of new credit cards.

In terms of credit cards, HDFC Bank was followed by State Bank of India (1.37 crore) and ICICI Bank (1.29 crore) at the end of March 2022.

RBI had imposed a ban on HDFC Bank in December 2020 asking the lender to stop all launches of its upcoming digital business-generating activities and sourcing of new credit card customers after repeated outages at its data centre which impacted operations.

The ban was partially lifted in August last year and fully in March this year.