Paola Andrea Vargas Rubio – [email protected]
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The increase in covid-19 cases in the country and the measures to contain its spread continue to impact the behavior of credit cards. These plastics recorded a drop of 8.6% in 10 months, as the banking system went from having 16 million valid cards in January 2020 to 14.6 million in October.
When comparing the October data (14.6 million cards) with that of March (16.33 million), a 10.6% drop in the number of valid cards is evidenced. This is not an exclusive behavior of October, since as of the fourth month of the previous year a drop in the number of valid plastics began to be registered (see graph).
These collapses in the number of active cards translate into more than 1.39 million plastics ceased to be valid between January and October, due to the fact that the number of cards has been growing. saving because of the loss of employment or the decrease in income, as explained by David Nieto Martínez, teacher and coordinator of the financial area of the Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences of El Bosque University.
Another factor that is driving the reduction in the number of cards in circulation has to do with the fact that there has been a decrease in the delivery of these plastics by banks, with the aim of mitigating the different risk factors of non-compliance said Nieto, who added that with the economic reactivation an improvement in its use has been observed.
The improvement to which the expert refers is evidenced in that when comparing the data of the cards in force in September with those of October, it is found that the number of plastics registered a variation of 0.27%, that is to say that the total of active cards went from 14.58 million in the ninth month of the year to 14.62 million during the tenth month of 2020, according to data consolidated by the Superfinanciera.
The improvement in the number of current credit cards was reflected in the preference that this plastic had over debit. During the special dates of last year: Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the three days without VAT, credit cards had a 62% share, detailed the ‘Report of buying behavior in the country during Christmas and special dates of 2020’ shared by CredibanCo.
To this panorama, it is also added that the valid cards in a month decreased 48% between January and October of the previous year, since the active plastics during the tenth month of the year reached 181,728, while in January they were 350,793. Despite the fact that the October data continues to be low compared to what was registered at the beginning of last year, the level reached in terms of active cards began to show an increase in October after, for example, in April it stood at 53,205 and in September at 153,277.
In line with this, Alfredo Barragán, an expert in banking at the University of Los Andes, assured that demand will increase, but banks will be cautious when granting quotas due to the current situation.
Plastics temporarily blocked are more than 1.9 million
According to the most recent report published by the Financial Superintendency, the number of temporarily blocked credit cards exceeded 1.9 million at the end of October last year; On the other hand, in January, this figure stood at 1.95 million and during the tenth month of 2019, the temporarily blocked cards reached 1.77 million. While reviewing the number of canceled credit cards shows a decrease during the 10 months analyzed, since in January this figure reached 302,304 and at the end of October it stood at 266,779.
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