The first two months of Covid-19 Delta lockdowns have further stifled credit card activity.
According to the RBA's summary of statistics on retail payments, the total value of card purchases on Australian-issued cards in August was A$58.9 billion, with credit cards losing further ground to debit cards. While credit cards declined marginally (down by 0.1 per cent on transactions worth A$24.6 billion), debit cards have continued to take market share, accounting for $34.3 billion, a rise of 2.9 per cent
Michael Ebstein from MWE Consulting observed: "Balances continue to be battered, having fallen by $4000 million over just the last two months. The decline from July 2021 was $1,003 million to take the total to $35,003 million.
"Total balances have lost just on a third of their value over the last three years. Balances accruing interest decreased by $596 million from July 2021 to $19,121 million in August.
"In the past three years when total balances declined by 32.1%, balances accruing interest fell by 40.6%," Ebstein said.
In further commentary, RateCity.com.au research director, Sally Tindall, said the slide in credit card debt was likely to continue for the duration of lockdown.
"At just over $18 billion in credit card debt, there’s still plenty of work to be done but we’ve come a long way in a relatively short space of time. Just five years ago the national credit card debt was north of $31 billion.
Tindall's concern, however, is that some people are swapping one form of credit for another, using buy now, pay later, for instance.
The New Payments Platform transactions also featured strongly on the RBA's analysis: this showed the value of retail payments hit $93.4 billion, up 5.6 per cent for the month, continuing on a whopping 86.9 per cent growth trajectory for the year to August 2021. Volume showed comparable growth, racking up 84.9, up by 3.4 per cent month on July 2021 and a 70.4 per cent growth rate for the year.
The RBA's analysis also showed that ATM networks continue to lose relevance, supporting transactions totalling $7.3 billion, a decline of 1.9 per cent for the month and a drop of 20.2 per cent for the year ended August 2021. Transactions for August 2021 totalled 24.8 million – a decline of 8.4 per cent for the month and down 23.4 per cent for the year.