Use of plastic money on rise

There are about 22 million credit cards in India (as on January 2007). And the total value of such transactions almost doubled between 2003-04 and 2005-06, to around Rs 33,900 crore.

The latest available data, which covers the first 10 months of 2006-07, indicates continued robust growth, in the number of credit cards increasing at 28% year-on-year. Over the same period, the value of credit card transactions grew by 20%.

But, the number of credit cards in India - 22 million - is tiny for a country with a population exceeding 1.1 billion.

Since many people have multiple cards, the number of cardholders is much smaller than the number of cards in circulation.

Credit card issuers in India have plenty of room to expand their customer bases aggressively over the next few years.