Credit Cards payments up by 22 percent

In mean time, peoples pay more money with their credit cards. Payment through credit cards up by 22 % in last financial year. But the active credit card goes down by 2.7%.
Debit cards transactions increased by 46.5 % because of the increase in ATMs chains.
Most of the banks issues ATM for their saving account holders for withdrawing easy cash from ATM. Now active debit card goes to 22.8 cr while the credit card was just 1.8 cr.
SBI stood at no.1 with largest depositor base in India, SBI issued 8 cr debit cards, No.2 is ICICI Bank with 1.65 cr, 3rd is HDFC 1.31 cr, In credit card bazaar, HDFC at No.1 with over .5 crore active credit cards followed by ICICI Bank, SBI, Citibank and standard chartered. Calculate your emi with EMI Calculator
RBI data shows, the value of transactions at domestic ATMs using debit cards to be Rs 9,48,346 crore across 398.40 crore transactions in the March 2010-February 2011 period, while domestic ATM-based credit card transactions were worth just Rs 934 crore across 0.19 crore transactions.

Mastercard, Visa Best Positioned To Profit Among Credit Card Companies

American Express.
A quick look at the fundamentals shows this company currently trades at 12.05x forward earnings, price to book value of 3.29 and projected EPS growth next year of about 5%. Also important to mention is the high debt to equity ratio of 3.58. This is a scarily high number and looking at the total debt over 5 years, there has been little to show that management is concerned with paying down this debt. Rates may be low for some time but even at low rates of interest the company is still throwing money out the window in interest payments.
Next Discover Card Financial Services (DFS).
Fundamentals for discover card are slightly more promising that AXP's with a forward P/E ratio of 8.79 and debt to equity ratio of 2.4. DFS trades slightly below twice book value at 1.92. The company also has cash on hand, about 6.91 per share. This should help the company lower its debt and secure the financial stability of the company.
MasterCard.
The #2 company in regards to market share, the company exhibits some extreme fundamental data. MA trades currently about 2 times the P/E ratios of the previous two companies. Its earnings multiple is 16.65 yet this is justified by the company's 18% growth in EPS expected next year and over the next five years. The company has no debt which enhances the company's financial stability and has an outstanding $28 per share of cash on hand. This cash on hand is equivalent to 8% of the stock price. This leads me to believe the company may be planning a significant share buyback and/or may increase its current dividend or announce a special dividend. On the negative side, the company trades 8 times book value which is a very large over-pricing, which may cause some selling pressure moving forward.
Visa .
Visa is the #1 company in regards to market share and currently trades at 15.91 times forward earnings and also has no debt to payoff. Visa also has its high P/E ratio justified by a growth rate next year of 15% and a 5 year growth rate of 18%. Visa has about 4.68 per share of cash on hand which it may use to continue its ongoing share buyback plans.
Intangibles
AXP is one of the few cards that still charges its users to have the card and the rates are not cheap. Of recent, the company has focused on promoting its brand by waiving the annual fee which should help spur growth, but the key to the company's success will be whether or not it can hold on to those customers to generate the fee revenue.
DFS is more than a credit card company, it is a financial services company. Over 70% of all credit card users have stated that they use the company's website to pay bills or monitor their statements. Through this usage, Discover is able to promote its financial services business such as online banking and CDs. This area may offer DFS a growth opportunity that isn't available through the other card companies.
What went into my decision:
1. Visa has the largest circulation of credit and debit cards by almost double its next competitor, MasterCard. It has global growth potential that is already being implemented and it's in the process of reaching untapped markets and catering to unique curcumstances around the world, such as in India, where debit cards, not credit cards, are the primary medium for payment.
2. MasterCard has the ability (and has already begun) to expand overseas but will really need to break through in a big way since Visa already has a 2:1 advantage in cards issued. Apply for Credit cards with best deals and offers
3. Discover Card has great growth potential horizontally with its online banking division, however, vertically I see growth in the credit card industry to be tough at best.
4. American Express won't have much of a future if it doesn't pay down the debt and alter its business model. With the changing economic times, so must American Express change its business model to phase out annual fee cards. When it comes time for businesses, especially small businesses, to cut costs and find savings wherever they can, finding an alternative to American Express will be a no brainer.

Credit card transactions spike in January

Transactions worth Rs. 6,934.65 crore were carried out in India through credit card in January, 2011, growth of 27.82 % from that in the same period last year.
Credit card transactions during January, 2010 were at Rs. 5,425.51 crore, according to the RBI data.
The number of credit cards in circulation have, however, declined by over 10 % to 1.81 crore as on January 31, 2011, from 2.02 crore in the same period last year.
During the April-January period of the fiscal, the total transactions carried out via credit cards increased 21.78 % to Rs. 62,335.44 crore as against Rs. 51,188.94 crore in the April-January period of 2010-11.
Meanwhile, debit card transactions in January were up by 49.04 % to Rs. 3,712.67 crore, as against Rs. 2,491 crore in the corresponding month last year.
There were 21.82 crore debit cards in use in the country as on January 31, 2011, up over 25 % over the figure of 17.41 crore in the year-ago period.
In April-January period, the total transactions carried out by debit cards jumped by 47.06 %, to Rs. 32,029.24 crore, from Rs. 21,779.83 crore in the first 10 months of the last fiscal.

A credit card that talks to you!

Imagine your credit card talking to you and displaying your balance, while doubling as a reward card. Well, your imagination will soon turn into a reality.

Dynamics Inc is developing such cards -- due to be introduced in the US later this year -- which will have wafer- thin microprocessors and would run on batteries that can last up to three years.

However, the credit cards will only display personal information after a security code is entered.

Citibank has released the new 2G card, which has a programmable magnetic strip and buttons on the front for users to choose to use it as a credit card or just to spend reward points, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

A trial is currently ongoing and, if successful, it could roll out across the country.

Even Mastercard has just released a card that has a small LCD screen which displays a one-time code which the customer can use to make an online purchase. It means even if someone's credit card details are stolen, they will be useless to buy anything with without the one-off code.

Jeff Mullen, the CEO of Dynamics Inc which is working on several other high-tech cards, explained that the end of the magnetic strip has been mooted for years, but is still the dominant payment system in the world.

He said: "Magnetic stripe readers are being placed in more places than ever before -- like vending machines, movie theater kiosks and taxicabs. Download Songs

"Even in Japan, where the infrastructure is in place and phones (which can make payments) have been distributed for seven years, the volume of phone payments is significantly less than one per cent share of transactions.

"European chip cards comprise only about 10 % of cards in world."

Banks, phone providers, Google and Apple, are also working on mobile payment systems which rely on short-range wireless technology that allows electronic devices to transmit encrypted data.

"Although mobile payments is the future, you're not going to move all that overnight to magical phones. So these are step innovations, rather than leap innovations.

"Some are very much needed, and some are probably not going to make it," Todd Ablowitz, President of Double Diamond Group, a consulting firm on payments strategy technologies and products was quoted by the British newspaper as telling the 'creditcards.com'