The number of personal credit cards issued by banks in Macau rose 8.8 percent year-on-year to 1.4 million at the end of last year, the Macau Monetary Authorities (AMCM) has announced.
A statement by Macau's quasi-central bank yesterday attributed the increase in personal credit cards last year primarily to the rising number of dual-currency and triple-currency cards.
According to the statement, the number of pataca (MOP) cards rose 8.0 percent to 996,607, Hong Kong dollar cards increased 4.1 percent to 97,836 and yuan (RMB) cards grew 13.0 percent to 332,869.
While the pataca is Macau's sole legal tender, the Hong Kong dollar and yuan (renminbi) are also widely used in the special administrative region.
At the end of last year, credit card credit limit granted by banks in Macau reached 39.7 billion patacas, up by 13.5 percent year-on-year.
Credit card receivables amounted to 3.0 billion patacas, of which the rollover amount totalled 898 million patacas, representing 30 percent of credit card receivables, the statement noted. The delinquency ratio - i.e. the ratio of delinquent amount overdue for more than three months to credit card receivables - stood at 1.61 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.
Macau's population stood at 676,100 at the end of September last year, according to the latest available demographic data by the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC).
