Taiwan's Credit-card Spending Grows to NT$167B. in May

Due to Mother Day's promotions, Taiwan's credit-card spending in May reached NT$167 billion (US$5.57 billion), up NT$3.5 billion (US$116.67 million) from a month earlier, with the banks registering the top-5 spending being, in sequence, Cathay United Bank, CTBC Bank, Citibank, E. Sun Bank, and Taishin International Bank, according to the statistics released by Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC).

Cathay posted the the highest credit-card spending of NT$25.7 billion (US$856.76 million), closely followed by CTBC's NT$25.4 billion (US$846.67 million). Insiders say that the competition between these two banks continues to intensify since Cathay beat CTBC last year to win the right to float Costco affinity cards.

In May Cathay issued 60,000 new credit cards, the highest among its local peers. However, last year CTBC generated revenue of NT$4.53 billion (US$151 million) from credit card service fees, higher than Cathay's NT$3.55 billion (US$118.33 million) by nearly NT$1 billion (US$33.33 million). And in Q1, 2014 the former's card service fee revenue totaled  NT$1.03 billion (US$34.33 million), still higher than the latter's NT$960 million (US$32 million).

In the same month Taiwan witnessed some  23.35 million active credit cards (ones having been used in the last six months), up 120,000 cards from the previous month, and surging 1.43 million cards from a year earlier. The top-5 effective card issuers were CTBC, Cathay, E. Sun Bank, Citibank, and Taishin. (JL)

Taiwan's Top-5 Credit-card Spending Banks                                  Unit: NT$B.
Rank	Bank	Credit-card spending
1	Cathay	25.7
2	CTBC	25.4
3	Citibank	20.1
4	E. Sun	17.1
5	Taishin	13.5

Source: FSC