Key Trends Driving Increased Credit Cards Usage in India

-SBI Card insights highlight strong growth in online transactions, and UPI-linked usage
-Multi-Card usage and EMI offerings are driving lifestyle and high-value transactions

New Delhi: India’s consumption landscape is evolving rapidly, with spending patterns increasingly reflecting aspirational lifestyle, digital-first transactions, and greater adoption of flexible payment options. Over the past decade, rising incomes, expanding urbanisation, and an increasingly aspirational middle class, have reshaped how and where people spend. With around 118.6 million credit cards in circulation and over ₹23.62 trillion credit card spends during FY’26, the ecosystem is witnessing a clear shift from expansion to utilisation. Insights from SBI Card, India’s largest pure-play credit card player, indicates that credit card customers are spending more on experiences and lifestyle categories alongside necessities, while also increasingly leveraging digital platforms.
Evolving Customer Behaviour
Supported by rising incomes and exposure, spending behaviour of Indian customers is becoming increasingly aspirational, and experience-driven, highlighting a shift towards customer’s capacity for discretionary expenditure. SBI Card’s FY’26 data indicates that retail spends reached the highest ever level of over ₹3.54 trillion, with a 15% growth YoY. Online spends contributed nearly 62.5% in retail spends, reflecting the growing inclination for digital-first consumption across both non-discretionary and discretionary categories.
Hyper-personalised, seamless experiences, and self-service-led digital platforms are becoming integral to driving deeper customer engagement and convenience. As per SBI Card, millions of customers are frequently leveraging SBI Card’s digital platforms such SBI Card mobile app, Live Chat integrated Ask ILA chatbot, WhatsApp Service, for their varied needs, from applying for a new card to query resolution. Today, SBI Card mobile app enjoys a strong 4.6 and 4.5 rating on google play and app store, respectively, owing to its focus on enhanced customer experience.
Commenting on the evolving credit card ecosystem in India, Salila Pande, MD & CEO, SBI Card, said, “Rising income and aspirations, progressive policies, digitisation, and growing payments infrastructure, is reshaping credit card transactions. Customers are increasingly gravitating towards experiences, lifestyle-driven purchases, and seamless everyday transactions, reflecting a more confident and evolving mindset. At SBI Card, we remain focussed on further strengthening our product portfolio through meaningful partnerships and innovation, to address these evolving needs, while contributing to India’s thriving digital payments landscape.”
UPI on Credit Cards Accelerates Everyday Usage
India’s digital payment ecosystem has evolved rapidly with UPI emerging as the backbone of everyday transactions. A notable evolution within this ecosystem is the growing adoption of UPI-linked credit cards, which is expanding its role within everyday transactions. As per SBI Card’s Q4 FY’26 data, UPI-linked credit cards spends grew by over 10% QoQ, led by segments such as departmental stores & groceries, utilities, fuel, apparel, and restaurants – indicating growing customer comfort and confidence.
Credit Card Adoption Expands To Tier 2+ Cites
Credit card adoption is gradually expanding beyond metropolitan markets with rising incomes, improving digital awareness, and expanding payments infrastructure. The integration of RuPay credit cards with UPI is further accelerating this trend by enabling customers in smaller cities to use credit seamlessly, even for their everyday spends, including small-ticket purchases.SBI Card’s data indicates that around 77% of UPI-active credit card customers, and nearly 81% UPI-credit spends originate from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, highlighting strong adoption of digital credit in emerging markets, and reinforcing the role of credit card in supporting financial inclusion.
Growing Affinity towards Muti-Card Usage
Customers are increasingly adopting a preference for using multiple credit cards to cater to various spending requirements, for instance, SBI Card MILES for travel, SBI Card PULSE for wellness, BPCL SBI Card for fuel, Flipkart SBI Card for lifestyle spends, PhonePe for digital transactions, etc.
The rising adoption of such credit cards among digitally savvy customers reflects a growing inclination towards category-specific benefits, personalised rewards, and ecosystem-led value propositions. This trend highlights the evolution of customer behaviour towards more experience-driven card usage across shopping, travel, lifestyle, and everyday spending categories.
EMI’s Driving Spending Through Credit Cards
As per SBI Card FY’26 data, EMI spends witnessed a healthy double digit YoY growth. Customers are increasingly opting for EMI-based transactions as it makes purchase of gadgets, consumer durables, etc. affordable and convenient. The trend of spreading payments in instalments for high value purchases is also extending beyond metros in Tier 2+ cities, reflecting deeper credit penetration and evolving spending patterns.
To address this growing demand, companies such as SBI Card are focussing on partnering with leading brands to roll-out offers, and flexible payment options across multiple categories including smartphones, consumer durables, gadgets, furnishing, among others.
About SBI Card
SBI Cards and Payment Services Limited (‘SBI Card’) is a non-banking financial company that offers extensive credit card portfolio to individual cardholders and corporate clients which includes lifestyle, rewards, travel & fuel, and banking partnership cards along with corporate cards covering all major cardholder’ segments in terms of income profile and lifestyle. The brand has a wide base of around 22.1 MM cards-in-force. SBI Card has a diversified customer acquisition network that enables the organisation to engage prospective customers across multiple channels. SBI Card is a technology driven company.
The Company is listed on National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. (“NSE”) and BSE Ltd.(“BSE”).
P.S. The brand name of the company is ‘SBI Card’, and it is registered in the name of ‘SBI Cards and Payment Services Limited’. The company is trading under the entity name ‘SBICARD’ on stock exchanges.