Use of plastic Money is growing at an unprecedented rate in India. lesser number of installed Point-of-sale (PoS) terminals is the major obstacle in the growth of debt cards.Smart card has many innovative features which may spurt the use of cards in India. Smart card is more safe to use in electronic form than the present form of cards."Credit card business is a volume game and initially highly capital intensive."
Plastic money is growing by leaps and bounds in India. Today, many banks are offering cards. Though the foreign banks have a dominant share, aggressive entry of the Indian banks like SBI, ICICI and HDFC Bank may soon change the rules of the game. Today, SBI-GE is the third largest issuer of credit cards.
The credit card market in India is projected to grow at the rate of 20-25% per annum in the coming years. There are currently around 3.8 million credit card users compared to 3.0 million in 1990. Visa credit card grew by 46.4% in India while the growth in Asia Pacific was only 6% for Q3 of 2003. The competition among banks has been growing and they are offering so many add-on incentives like waiver of first year annual fee, discount on retail stores, personal loans etc., to woo the customers.
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