“Cards are now increasingly competing within the same consumption-driven small credit space, rather than operating as a default option,” the report said. Even as card balances increased eightfold in a decade to more than ₹3 lakh crore at the end of March this year, risk spilled across products, delinquency data showed.
Credit information company TransUnion CIBIL segmented cardholders into four behavioural personas – occasional card users, card-centric users, diversified credit users and high exposure users – and tracked how missed payments on any credit product correlated with card delinquency specifically.
Among occasional card users, who use cards mainly for payments and rewards, just 4% missed at least two payments across products in a 12-month period, and their card delinquency rate (90-plus days past due) was only 0.6%.