Use of credit cards increasing, says study

New Delhi, Oct 15: The credit card markets has witnessed a boom in the last few years with credit cardholders in India increasing their usage to 3 to 10 times, only marginally lower than the Asian average of 4 times per week, a study said.

According to a study conducted by the seven country Asia-Pacific credit card consumer research, mostly the credit cards are used for the purchase of clothing, shoes and the restaurants.

Home electronics and travel/airfare or railway tickets are tied for the third spot, indicating a significant opportunity to expand credit card usage in categories such as utility payments and for other smaller categories such as hospitals, education and grocery.

The strong majority of cardmembers conceded the growing importance of owning a credit card in the light of more and more things being available online.

Though more than 55 per cent of card users still use cash/debit cards more than credit card, a majority of Indian credit cardmembers expected most of their purchases would be made online with a credit card in the next five years.

In the meantime about 75 per cent of cardmembers in India have more than one card and a little over a third have more than one plastic from the same institution. So, increasingly the marketing battle is moving to one between plastics instead of between plastics versus cash.

UNI