ICICI Bank Ltd, India’s largest private sector bank, expects its credit card customer base to grow by half a million by March-end, according to a senior bank official.
“Online shopping has been the fastest growing segment in the credit card space with a growth of 35 per cent as compared to overall spends growing at 20 per cent. We will add close to half a million cards by the year-end,” Rajiv Sabharwal, Executive Director, ICICI Bank, said in a conference call to announce the launch of its credit card — ICICI Bank Carbon, in partnership with Visa.
“The new card will be offered largely to existing ICICI Bank credit card members. It is available at a one-time fee of Rs 1,000 plus applicable service tax,” Sabharwal said.
The card provides reward points, complimentary movie tickets, access to culinary programmes, entry into select airport lounges in India and complete waiver of 2.5 per cent fuel surcharge at HPCL fuel stations. As on June 2013, the loans on ICICI Bank’s credit cards aggregated about Rs 3,000 crore with about 2.95 million outstanding cards.
According to him, there has been a decline in the number of cards since 2011, as many banks are cleaning up their books due to large delinquencies and inactive cards.