Credit Card Spending Drops to 7-Month Low of Rs 1.67trn, New Additions Halve in February

Spending through credit cards by Indian consumers has dropped to a seven-month low of Rs 1.67 lakh crore in February, Business Standard newspaper reported, citing the Reserve Bank of India's data. In January, spending stood at Rs 1.84 lakh crore.

Notably, last month's new credit card additions nearly halved to 440,000 from 820,000 in January.

The decline was also visible in the biggest players including HDFC Bank, SBI Cards and ICICI Bank. HDFC Bank's transactions dropped to Rs 46,378.18 crore in February from Rs 50,664.04 crore in January. On the other hand, ICICI Bank’s card transactions slumped to Rs 30,990.86 crore from Rs 35,681.6 crore. Likewise, the decline in Axis Bank was Rs 18,884.27 crore from Rs 20,212.17 crore in the previous month.

The largest credit card issuer HDFC Bank added 178,000 cards in February as compared to 300,000 cards in January. The second largest issuer, SBI Card, added 182,000 cards in February, down from 240,000 in the previous month. Transactions on SBI Card also dropped to Rs 26,175.55 crore from Rs 28,976.68 crore during the period.

Slower Growth

The total number of outstanding credit cards in the system has surged to 109.31 million from 108.87 million in January 2025. According to Care Ratings, the overall outstanding credit card balances grew at a slower pace of 15.6% year-on-year, The Economic Times reported. It has now reached Rs 2.9 lakh crore in the first nine months of this fiscal year, which is significantly slower than the 32.5% growth recorded during the same period last year.

Earlier this month, a Kotak Bank report highlighted a sharp slowdown in overall credit card spending of less than 10% YoY. It also noted that there is a sharper slowdown in online spending as compared with offline spending. Two-thirds of the spending through credit cards is for online transactions, while one-third is for debit cards.