Credit card transactions up by over 28% in July

Transactions worth Rs 7,471.76 crore were carried out using credit cards in the country in July, this year, 28.4% more than that in the same month last year.

Credit card transactions in July, 2010, amounted  to Rs 5,817.46 crore, according to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data.

The number of credit cards in circulation has, however, declined by over 6.7% to 1.76 crore as of July 31, 2011, from 1.89 crore at the end of the same period last year.

As per the data, transactions using credit card during the April-July period of this fiscal stood at Rs 29,599.26 crore, against Rs 22,765.33 crore in the first four months of 2010-11, a jump of 30%.

Meanwhile, debit card transactions were up by 45.8% in July to Rs 4,232.57 crore from Rs 2,903.02 crore in the corresponding month last year.

There were over 24.33 crore debit cards in use in the country as of July 31,  011, up 24.3% over the figure of almost 19.56 crore in the year-ago period.

Transactions by debit card during April-July period were up 45.2% to Rs 15,923.35 crore, against Rs 10,967.53 crore in the year-ago period.

The latest jump in transactions through credit and debit cards signals the continuation of the growth observed in the last fiscal, according to experts.

In 2010-11, transactions through credit cards in the country went up by 22.15% to touch Rs 75,515.68 crore in value terms.

In addition, debit card transactions went up by 46.46% last fiscal to Rs 38,691.88 crore.