The 2020s have been a time of tremendous growth for personal credit cards around the world, as large swathes of businesses increased acceptance in the wake of pandemic-era turbulence. Rewards and loyalty programmes remain an important element of the competitive landscape for credit cards across various markets. This briefing updates Euromonitor International’s study of credit card offerings across a subsection of markets, and analyses the global credit card payscape.
This report comes in PPT.
Personal credit cards enjoyed considerable success during the 2018-2023 review period. The combination of markets continuing to switch away from cash payments, as well as companies digitising during the pandemic years has helped fuel a strong credit card market in many markets. At the same time, loyalty features and rewards are enjoying a heyday in a number ofleading markets.
Funding loyalty and rewards programmes is an expensive proposition. Most of the strongest programmes exist in markets where interchange fee regulation (the underlying funding for most programmes) is relatively minimal. Markets that implement interchange fee caps are much more likely to see their rewards programmes diminish in effectiveness, and thus undercut one of the primary value propositions of the format.
Many markets have established strong personal credit card issuing landscapes; however, it is critical to keep risks in peripheral view. Geopolitical risk, for example, has led to a sanctions-induced crippling of the Russian credit card market. Competitive new offerings such as buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) and faster electronic payments also pose threats to established players. Even for those largely escaping these risks, there is the danger of a competitor providing a more compelling offering and seizing top of wallet status.
This is the aggregation of ATM, charge, credit, debit, e-purse and retail cards. Note that smart cards are not included in financial cards.
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