The industry faces a dichotomy between scale pressures and quality breakthroughs.

As the credit card industry experiences overall pressure, nine A-share listed joint-stock commercial banks are undergoing a "bubble-squeezing" transformation with increasingly clear differentiation patterns. In the first half of 2025, multiple banks experienced varying degrees of contraction in credit card loan balances and transaction volumes, while some banks that pioneered transformation have demonstrated counter-cyclical resilience.

**Abandoning "Scale Worship"**

In the first half of the year, scale-related indicators for the nine joint-stock banks generally came under pressure, with only a few banks achieving customer growth. Abandoning "scale worship" has become a collective choice for the credit card industry.

In terms of loan balances, except for Zheshang Bank and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, the other seven joint-stock banks experienced varying degrees of contraction. CM BANK's credit card loan balance reached 924.489 billion yuan, declining 2.46% from the beginning of the year, but still significantly higher than other joint-stock banks. Ping An Bank's credit card loan balance was 394.866 billion yuan, down 9.23% from the beginning of the year, representing the largest decline among joint-stock banks.

Credit card business revenue also remained in a downward trajectory. Four joint-stock banks including Everbright Bank, Huaxia Bank, CITIC Bank, and CM BANK disclosed relevant data. In terms of revenue decline, Everbright Bank's credit card business revenue was 13.66 billion yuan, down 21.3% year-on-year, marking the "largest decline" among banks, primarily due to transaction volume decreases affecting fee income. CITIC Bank and Huaxia Bank followed with declines of 14.61% and 12.91% respectively.

CM BANK achieved credit card interest income of 30.612 billion yuan, down 4.96% year-on-year, and non-interest income of 10.471 billion yuan, down 16.23% year-on-year.

Regarding transaction volumes, CM BANK is currently the only bank in the market with credit card transaction volumes exceeding 2 trillion yuan, with first-half transaction volumes declining 8.54% year-on-year. Everbright Bank and CITIC Bank also saw transaction volumes decline by over 8%.

In terms of active card volumes, joint-stock banks showed mixed results, with some banks experiencing declining active card counts. Ping An Bank's active credit card accounts totaled 45.3908 million, decreasing by 1.5353 million accounts compared to the end of 2024, a 3.3% decline, primarily due to the bank's proactive cleanup of dormant cards and customer base optimization, focusing on high-quality new customer acquisition (such as young customers and car owners).

CM BANK's active credit cards totaled 96.9267 million cards with 69.6332 million active accounts, growing 0.27% compared to the end of last year, maintaining stable scale since 2021.

Senior credit card expert Dong Zheng believes that card volume scale is no longer an indicator of credit card business performance, particularly with dormant card cleanup objectively bursting the scale illusion and becoming an important measure for industry bubble-squeezing. In transitioning from incremental to stock development models, this reconstructs the "true value" of credit card business.

Dong Zheng stated that focusing on credit card business scale should primarily use user count as a more objective reference indicator, eliminating "ineffective scale" phenomena caused by multiple cards per household. By implementing services for each individual user, genuine transformation toward stock customer management can be achieved, initiating value reconstruction that enables structural transformation to truly drive industry maturation.

**NPL Rate Differentiation**

In the first half, the nine joint-stock banks showed differentiated non-performing loan situations in credit cards, with risk management capabilities becoming the "watershed" for differentiated competition, and some banks' risk control effectiveness demonstrating counter-cyclical resilience.

At Industrial Bank's 2025 interim results briefing, Industrial Bank Vice Chairman and President Chen Xinjiang stated that in recent years, the bank has made significant efforts to promote risk resolution and business transformation in real estate, local government financing platforms, and credit cards, with credit card newly generated NPLs declining 7.5% year-on-year in the first half.

According to interim reports, Industrial Bank's credit card NPL rate was 3.28% with an overdue rate of 5.57%, declining 0.36 and 0.75 percentage points respectively from the end of last year.

CITIC Bank's credit card NPL balance was 12.516 billion yuan, increasing 279 million yuan from the end of last year, with an NPL rate of 2.73%, rising 0.22 percentage points from the end of last year.

China Minsheng Bank's credit card NPL rate was 3.68%, rising 0.4 percentage points from the end of 2024, the "highest" among the nine joint-stock banks, with NPL balance at 16.542 billion yuan, increasing 878 million yuan from the end of 2024.

On September 1, at the 2025 interim results conference, CM BANK Vice President Wang Ying stated that changes in credit card risk conditions can serve as a leading indicator and important reference for retail credit risk changes. Wang Ying pointed out that from 2019 to now, over six years, except for slight improvement and adjustment in 2021, credit card market-wide NPL rates have shown clear upward trends in other time periods, with no turning point visible.

According to interim reports, CM BANK's credit card NPL balance was 16.153 billion yuan, with a credit card loan NPL rate of 1.75%, unchanged from the end of last year.

**Premium Customer Segments, Scenario Installments, and Online Operations as Three Engines**

In recent years, multiple banks have frequently implemented credit card contraction measures to reduce operational costs. Some banks have reduced benefits by cutting points and promotional activities; some banks have cancelled credit card apps, integrating them into mobile banking app sections; some banks have closed remote credit card sub-centers, pursuing "cost reduction and efficiency improvement" from multiple angles.

Notably, the nine joint-stock banks are exploring transformation paths in "stock management," with breakthroughs in three directions being particularly significant, becoming core drivers to offset scale pressures.

First, premium customer segment management has become the "key to efficiency improvement." For example, CITIC Bank's new card premium customer proportion reached 55.48%, rising 10.79 percentage points year-on-year; Industrial Bank's young, highly-educated new customer proportion increased 2.2 percentage points year-on-year, with this customer segment's NPL rate 1.2 percentage points lower than average; Ping An Bank launched differentiated products targeting young customers and car owners, such as upgrading the "Ping An Youth Platinum Credit Card" focusing on Generation Z needs, with online consumption cashback, video membership benefits, and campus-specific offers to strengthen young customer identity and boost young new customer proportions.

Second, scenario installments have become a "growth dark horse." Shanghai Pudong Development Bank stated it capitalized on new energy vehicle consumption trends, with new energy vehicle installment balances growing from 11.088 billion yuan at the end of 2024 to 21.595 billion yuan, an increase of over 95%; Industrial Bank's auto installments and merchant installment transaction volumes surged 144.1% and 549.3% year-on-year respectively.

Third, online operations continue strengthening stickiness. CM BANK's Zhangshang Life App had 37.0852 million monthly active users, enhancing user experience through "local life offers" and "points lottery" activities; CITIC Bank's Dongka Space App had 19.3406 million monthly active users, with "Premium Group Buying" module transaction volumes growing 45% year-on-year, making online platforms the "main battlefield" for activating existing customers.

Dong Zheng believes that after 20 years of expansion, the credit card market has long been saturated, making manual card issuance to compete for incremental scale cost-ineffective, requiring a shift toward mining existing customer value. This forces the credit card industry to accelerate transformation from "emphasizing acquisition over retention" scale expansion to "emphasizing retention and efficiency" customer value mining. Although overall industry scale may continue contracting, quality will improve.

Differentiated competition will become mainstream. Dong Zheng stated that future credit card transformation will focus on two main directions: meeting high-end customer needs and mining high-end customer value, and satisfying basic customer rigid demands. High-end customer needs are diverse, not limited to consumption but focusing on experience. Basic customer needs are simpler, mainly providing payment and credit convenience.