The share of revolvers-customers who carry balances and pay interest-have declined sharply since the pandemic, giving way to a higher proportion of transactors who pay dues in full each month and generate no interest income for lenders.
Before Covid, revolvers accounted for 40% to 45% of credit card users. Post-pandemic, that has fallen to 22% to 24%, bankers said, fundamentally altering the economics of the business.
“The decline in the level of revolvers has impacted profitability,” ICICI Bank group CFO Anindya Banerjee said, adding that the business remained profitable and retained multiple levers-including cost management and rewards optimisation-to sustain returns. “It is a business one would continue to have a very strong focus on.”
Kotak Mahindra Bank whole-time director Anup Kumar Saha described the change as structural. “What has changed at the design level is you see much more transactors than revolvers between post-Covid and pre-Covid, that is a big structural change which has happened in the industry,” he said
SBI Cards provides one of the clearest examples of the trend, with its revolver rate declining from 34% in the March quarter of fiscal 2021 to 22% in the March quarter of fiscal 2026.
Also Read: India poised for strong growth revival despite global risks: Morgan Stanley
“Revolve rates have remained in the 22%-24% range over the past two years, and we expect a slight downward bias in FY27. We will continue to focus on expanding our EMI portfolio to offset this trend,” said Girish Budhiraja, chief sales and marketing officer at SBI Cards. “The customers acquired over the last two years have been more selectively sourced and are therefore displaying lower revolving behaviour. Our first approach to address this will be to grow instalment lending portfolios, rather than cutting reward programmes,” he added.