As of the third quarter of this year, the number of credit cards issued in China was 707 million, indicating a decrease of 100 million cards in the past three years. Analysts believe that the Chinese credit card market has transitioned from a game of quantity to a period of contraction.
On December 2, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) released the “Overview of Payment System Operations in the Third Quarter of 2025” on its official website. Data shows that by the end of the third quarter, the total number of credit cards nationwide reached 707 million.
In response to this, the century-old American financial magazine “Barron’s” published an article on its Chinese platform on December 17, stating that the total number of credit cards peaked at 807 million in 2022, but has now dropped to 707 million. In just three years, 100 million credit cards have disappeared from the market. Specifically, in 2025, 63 credit card sub-centers in China collectively shut down during the year, and Bank of Communications closed 56 frontline city branches.
According to reports citing information from a credit card center employee at a commercial bank, in 2019, they used to easily issue 100 diamond cards to tech company employees by “sweeping floors” each week. Now, it has become the norm that “it’s difficult to sweep floors, hard to get in the door, rare to meet people, and challenging to issue cards.” Popular locations for credit card sales such as supermarkets and office building lobbies now rarely see sales reps. For instance, a branch of Huaxia Bank at a commercial supermarket in Dongguan only received 2 inquiries in half a day, with no one applying for a card.
The main reason for the sharp decrease in the number of credit cards is believed to be the “loss of trust”. Customer data from 2025 shows that when users shift from actively seeking cards to banks taking the initiative to sell, the dynamics between the parties completely reverse. The card sales rate among post-95s has risen to 37%, while the no-card rate among post-00s has reached 42%.
Simultaneously with the significant reduction in the number of credit cards, the credit card delinquency rate is also on the rise. By the end of June 2025, the delinquency rate for credit cards at 12 major banks had reached 2.40%, with ICBC, Minsheng Bank, and Industrial Bank exceeding 3%, and the delinquency rate at some smaller banks like Shengjing Bank as high as 8.17% in 2024, and Chongqing Bank at 4.19%.
The report suggests that the decrease in the number of credit cards by nearly a hundred million, alongside the “continuous decline over 12 quarters, a loan scale reduction of 600 billion yuan within six months, and a general transaction volume decrease of over 8%”, all indicate the end of the era of “land grab” in the credit card industry. This demonstrates that the Chinese credit card industry has moved from a game of quantity to a period of contraction.