Nearly 54 crore Indians will have debit cards in next 3 years: ASSOCHAM

11 Feb 2013 Evaluate

As per the industry body ASSOCHAM survey, nearly 54 crore Indians will have debit cards in the next three years, which would be a massive step forward for banking industry to make the deeper financial inclusion. While, the number of credit cards would remain at less than three crore during the same period.

As per ASSOCHAM, by the end of last year, nearly 31.44 crore bank customers were issued debit cards, which are growing at a compound annual rate of 18 percent. With the focus on higher bank inclusion, this pace is expected to be sustained, if not improved and this would take the number of bank debit cards to well over 54 crore in the next three years, the study said.

Regarding credit cards, ASSOCHAM said that the number of credit cards, largely a phenomenon in metro cities among the middle and more affluent classes, is not growing at even half the rate of the debit cards. Till December 2012, the number of credit cards in the market was just 1.88 crore, with an annual growth of six to seven percent.

Explaining the reason for lower credit card growth, the study said that given the exorbitant rates of interest and excessive penal rates for even minor delay in payments, consumers are keeping themselves away from credit cards. Further, ASSOCHAM president Rajkumar Dhoot said that the lowest growth in the credit card is blamed to the card issuers, which have kept so many hidden charges, making users feel deceived.

Besides regular news of misuse of credit card transactions, increasing cyber crimes, hacking and data theft have also led to loss of public confidence in plastic money, especially credit cards. However, the debit cards provide a lot of safety to its customers and are largely being used for cash withdrawal and not much at the merchandise stores. ‘Debit cards are performing the role of bank cashiers, through ATMs’ the ASSOCHAM study pointed out.

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