After 8.3 times surge in outstanding balances, is credit card growth now plateauing? Here’s what a new report shows

Credit cards saw a massive traction over the past decade with a strong growth, across parameters, whether it was outstanding balances, active cards or growth in consumers with active cards. But, the growth seems to have slowed in the last few years as regulatory oversight increased in the unsecured credit market in the last few years as concerns rose over rising delinquencies, a new report by TransUnion CIBIL India shows.
 
Outstanding credit card balances have risen from just Rs 0.4 lakh crore as of March 2016 to Rs 3.1 lakh crore as of March 2026, an 8.3 times growth over the decade. However, the outstanding balance has been stagnant when compared to March 2025.
 
“The recent 4-year period witnessed muted growth in credit cards with higher regulatory vigilance in light of rapid unsecured credit expansion and higher delinquencies,” according to TransUnion CIBIL.  
 
But, that is just one reason. Credit cards also now face stiff competition from other credit and payment instruments to finance their lifestyle needs, such as UPI payments, gold loans, personal loans etc.

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The TransUnion CIBIL data points that the number of active cards has seen a 5 times growth over the past decade from 2.1 crore in March 2016 to 10.7 crore in March 2026. But, in the same period, the number of card holders have grown at a comparatively slower 3.6 times, from 1.4 crore to 5.2 crore.
 
Notably, the number of consumers holding 3 or more credit cards has grown to 22 per cent from 12 per cent. But, at the same time, consumers holding other consumption loans in wallet has also gone up to 32 per cent from 16 per cent.
 
“New to credit card (NTCC) consumer has come down significantly as a proportion. Today, lenders have moved towards credit tested borrowers, which means that borrowers who have established credit history. That's a phenomenon which we have seen not just for credit card but also for other retail asset products, that it's more of the credit tested borrowers that the lenders are tapping in. The proportion of borrowers being tapped in by the lenders who have an existing credit card in their wallet, has also gone up significantly in last couple of years,” said Bhavesh Jain, MD and CEO of TransUnion CIBIL.

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Interestingly, Gen Z consumers are more credit active at the time of their first card opening than their millennial counterparts, the whitepaper notes. One out of two new card young consumers opened another card within 12 months of first card, it pointed.
 
Rahul Kotabage, director and head – research and consulting, TransUnion CIBIL explained that the new to credit card segment continued to grow, but there was a slowness in terms of new card issuances.
 
“We do see about 22 per cent of the card issuances even now happening in that new to credit card segment. We do have about 8 per cent of customers still coming from the new to credit segment. What’s important is, this is currently in a way replacing the borrower set, which is going off and hence basically the plateau that we typically see right now,” he said.

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India still remains an underpenetrated market when it comes to credit cards. As of March 2026, India’s credit card penetration was at 25 per cent of the total credit-active consumers. The same was 70 per cent in the UK, 81 per cent in the USA, 97 per cent in Canada and as much as 98 per cent in Hong Kong.
 
Therefore, TransUnion CIBIL officials feel there remains a huge headroom for growth in India’s credit card market.
 
TransUnion CIBIL noted that consumers who had missed more than two payments across products over 12 months were more likely to be delinquent in card payments as well. Delinquency among those using credit cards occasionally was 0.4 per cent, while among the high exposure users, it stood at 3.3 per cent, it noted.

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