Overdue Credit Card Payments In China On The Rise

Overdue credit card debt in China was up 4.9 percent in the second quarter, as measured sequentially, Reuters reported on Thursday (Sept. 8). The data came from the country’s central bank.

As measured by payments overdue by more than six months, the total hit 48 billion yuan ($7.2 billion) at the close of the second quarter, and that tally was a bit more than 1.4 percent of total loans outstanding on cards. The total number of bank cards in use in the latest period was up 15.8 percent to 5.8 billion cards. Bill business was down 21 percent year over year to roughly 46 trillion yuan ($6.9 trillion), and the newswire stated that the slippage came amid higher oversight of bank fraud.

Elsewhere, nonperforming loans within the country’s banking sector were up to 1.8 percent of total loans, marking the highest level since 2009 at the height of the global financial crisis.