In the second quarter of this year, the use of deposit and credit cards by Russians fell by 4.5 million units, which is a record figure for the past five years. Such data of the Bank of Russia leads on Wednesday, September 9, the agency “RIA Novosti”.
The number of “plastic” in the second quarter of 2020 decreased by 2.3% – to 190.3 million cards. A similar decline was recorded only in the crisis year of 2015. As a result, the total number of cards issued by banks also stagnated: in April-June 2020, their number increased by only 500 thousand.
One of the reasons cited by all the experts interviewed is the introduction of restrictive measures in the economy amid the coronavirus pandemic, first of all, the tightening of the rules for issuing credit cards by banks. However, this is not the only reason.
Analysts also named the saturation of the market with cards as another limiting factor. On average, there are three cards for one able-bodied Russian, one of which is usually the main one and is actively used, and the rest are received “just in case”.
“In such a situation, receiving subsequent cards is no longer viewed by the consumer as essential. Most likely, this factor will partly remain in the future, “said Oleg Lagutkin, CEO of Equifax credit history bureau.
In his opinion, banks also began to try to offer cards only to those consumers who are most likely to use them, since the issue of an unclaimed card, its storage in the office and subsequent destruction carries significant costs for the bank.
Egor Dakhtler, an analyst at BCS financial group, believes that a general trend has emerged to reduce the number of cards used.
“People are increasingly realizing that having countless different cards in a wallet is pointless and not profitable, as there may be a service fee for each card,” he said.
Nadezhda Karavaeva, a senior analyst with bank ratings at the National Rating Agency, predicts a slight increase in the issue of cards in the third-fourth quarter due to the removal of most restrictive measures, as well as due to the measures of the Central Bank to reduce the additional capital burden on consumer lending for banks. At the same time, the number of credit cards in circulation will be approximately at the level of previous years.
In August, the expert of Jet Infosystems Alexey Sizov named dangerous places for making payments with bank cards. In the first place was the Internet, as the data of payment cards are often phished on the Internet.