Credit Card Most Profitable Business of Indian Banks

Credit Card lending is the most profitable business vertical of Indian Bank / Financial services company. High profitability is driven largely by the high yielding unsecured credit business. While share of fee income is high in total revenues (~50% of total income net of interest expenses), most of the fees (penalties, etc.) are credit-linked. The credit card penetration in India is quite low at 62 Cards per 1,000 working people.

Fees such as annual subscription charges are also largely recovered from customers that are borrowers or who have very low spending. The affluent customers, normally the transactors, account for most of the spending and help the credit card issuers screen as a potent marketing channel to manufacturers / traders. This enables the credit card issuer to

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Retail Loan Inquiries Improve + Delinquencies at FINTECH & NBFCS – CIBIL

In the COVID-19 pandemic times, retail credit inquiry volumes in October 2020 were 81% of last year October levels. Enquiry volumes have improved in home loans as well as Loan Against Properties (LAP). Auto and 2W loans have also seen rebound in volumes due to shift in consumer preferences. Personal loan volumes are yet to rebound impacted by fintechs-driven growth during the pre-Covid time. State owned PSU banks have been the earliest to recommence lending followed by private banks. NBFCs have seen much slower recovery. Further, semi-urban and rural have seen better rebound. For Sep 2020, PSU banks inquiry volumes are at 1.2X yoy whereas private banks are at ~0.9X and NBFCs at 0.6X. Although slow initially, credit cards are now showing better traction. PSU banks have shown better growth pick-up compared to

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UPI Mobile Payments Growing Exponentially

UPI mobile payments through mobile apps has been one of the biggest contributors to retail digital transactions in India. The pay mode now accounts for around half the retail digital transactions in volume terms, while its value share is around 10% (due to relatively small average per transaction value compared to NEFT/IMPS). UPI’s market share gains have mainly come at the expense of other traditional digital pay-modes such as NEFT, Credit cards and PPIs (pre-paid instruments like mobile wallets). Some contributing factors to the success of UPI have been Demonetization, mobile-first approach, instant bank-bank fund transfers, subsidy on transaction costs, growing penetration of mobile phones as well as Internet connectivity and early adoption by

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Digital Payments & Lending Revolution in Indian FinTech Space

The Digital Payments landscape in India has been revolutionized by the regulators and the banks’ proactive initiatives, e.g., IndiaStack and UPI. It is quite surprising that India has emerged as one of the most exciting markets for digital payments across the world. Last year, home-grown payment networks (RuPay and UPI) took a lion’s share of the total digital transactions, ~65%, showcasing how for once the Government efforts have been in the right direction for achieving targets.

Popular Payment methods are e-wallets, UPI, biometric payments, BharatQR code, and sound-wave-based payment technologies. One of the primary reasons can be attributed to the forward-thinking of central & state governments and Reserve Bank of India for successfully bringing a digital payment revolution in India. Buoyed by the success of Virtual Payment Address – UPI (it’s like your e-mail id), Google wrote to the US Federal Reserve, about UPI model adopted in India and recommended creating

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Chinese FinTechs Desperate for Slice of Indian Consumer Finance

In the midst of a deep down consumer financing crisis by Indian Fintech Startups, guess who is at the Gateway of India, Mumbai asking for NBFC license to operate in the Indian FinTech space. Yes! More than 2 dozen Chinese Dragons are waiting at the RBI gate in Mumbai.

What’s so special about Chinese Fintech Companies ?
Flush with funds, they target customers in the sub-prime segment [No CIBIL Score or a Score of just 500-550] and offer small-ticket loans (mainly pay cheque loans) which are short term in nature and profitable. There has been a regulatory clampdown in China last year which

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CIBIL Data – Retail Stress Increases in India

India’s Leading Credit Bureau – CIBIL data reveals that delinquencies across product levels in the retail segment have shown a modest increase but the situation is not alarming. The main segment which is under stress is auto loans, which is driven by CVs as evidenced in the latest results of banks.

Credit Card Segment – While the overall credit card balances grew by ~41% YoY to ~Rs1.1tn,
balances in the semi-urban and rural areas grew at a faster pace (+52% YoY) indicating increasing usage of cards as a payment option in these areas.

In the Personal Loan segment, the origination volumes more than doubled to 7.3m accounts out of which ~68% were

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