Credit card usage grows

BANGKOK, 10 December 2009 (NNT) – The Bank of Thailand (BoT) reports that there is an increase in credit card usage of 6.7% which is a sign of growth in consumption.

In the bank’s October reports, consumers spent about 80 billion THB via credit card, an increase of five billion THB from September.

6% of the increase or 3.3 billion THB accounts for domestic transactions with cash advance rising by 8% or 1.2 billion baht. The use of credit cards of domestic commercial banks has increased the most by four billion THB, followed by non-banks and foreign commercial banks by 897 million and 128 million THB respectively.

During the past month, there was a 0.4% increase in credit card holders, bringing the number to 13.27 million card holders.

The BoT further stated that that the situation indicated higher consumer confidence especially in the third and fourth quarters.

-- NNT 2009/12/11

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Increase in credit card use could also mean people have

less cash on hand to pay immediately for these purchases

and therefore they are "borrowing" to get what they

want or need now.

Are these people paying of credit card balance when they receive

their monthly statements or is their debt load increasing every month?

that would be more interesting and telling stat