Over 45 products have been discontinued this year, and the credit card industry is entering a period of contraction and adjustment.

Recently, multiple banks, including the Agricultural Bank of China, China Minsheng Bank, Bank of Communications, and China Guangfa Bank, have issued announcements one after another, stating that they will stop issuing several credit card products. The suspended products are mainly co-branded credit cards, while also covering some themed credit cards. Among them, Minsheng Bank has once and for all suspended 11 co-branded card products, while the Agricultural Bank of China has suspended 13 products such as the Ele.me co-branded card and several other card types, including student youth cards. State-owned major banks, joint-stock banks, and local banks are all involved, and smaller banks such as Wuhan Rural Commercial Bank and Zhejiang Rural Commercial Bank have also joined the list of suspensions.

According to incomplete statistics, since the beginning of the year, more than 45 credit card products have already been suspended. At the same time, the 2025 annual report data disclosed by 13 A+H-share listed banks also show that by the end of 2025, these 13 banks had cumulatively issued 799 million cards in total, down by about 4.6943 million compared with 2024. Credit cards—once a core growth engine for banks’ retail business—are now being hit with a “slowdown button.”

“Co-branded cards” mass delisting

Among the products being suspended, co-branded credit cards have become the core target of this round of adjustments. Many of the reasons mentioned by banks in their announcements are mainly “due to business adjustments” and “the contract agreement has expired,” among others. Su Xiaorui, senior researcher at Suxi Zhiyan, said that the credit card business has long had the problem of high enthusiasm for card issuance in the early stage and poor operational returns in the later stage. After new cards are promoted for a period of time, benefits often shrink and transaction frequency declines, and in some cases, they even trigger a wave of card cancellations. Co-branded cards are the main type being suspended, mainly because these cards are usually linked to specific IPs and special campaigns. Once the IP hype cools off or the event ends, the appeal of the cards declines accordingly.

The reporter noticed that some consumers have reported on social media that the benefits of certain platform co-branded credit cards they hold have continued to shrink. These benefits range from originally getting multiple times the points per month and cashback on spending, to now making even basic accumulated points complicated—“A card just loses value the more you use it; it’s better to cancel it.” On a certain complaint platform, if users search for “credit card” as a keyword, the number of consumer complaints reaches as many as 450,000. Common phenomena include the shrinking of airport VIP lounges, the devaluation of points redemptions, and higher thresholds for claiming spending-related perks. Issues such as improper marketing tactics, inducements to open cards and spend on installments, and vague contract terms have also greatly undermined many consumers’ trust in credit cards.

The People’s Bank of China’s 《Overall Operation of the Payment System in 2025》 shows that by the end of 2025, the nationwide number of credit cards and debit card-unified cards was 696 million, down by about 31 million from the end of 2024. From industry trends, credit card issuance has declined for three consecutive years. Compared with the historical peak at the end of Q3 2022, it is down by 111 million cards, with the scale approaching the level at the end of 2018, reaching a new low in nearly 7 years.

Behind the continued contraction in issuance volumes, regulatory policies are reshaping the industry logic. The 《Notice on Further Promoting the Standardized and Healthy Development of the Credit Card Business》 issued in 2022, after a transition period, has now been fully rolled out and implemented. The new rules clearly require that banks must not use issuance volume as a single or primary assessment indicator, and the rate of long-term dormant cards must not exceed 20%. Clearing ineffective capacity has become an inevitable choice for compliance-oriented operations. Blindly expanding customer bases and issuing large numbers of co-branded credit cards have led to the emergence of a large number of “sleeping cards,” which not only consume resources but also increase management costs.

Wang Pengbo, chief analyst at Broadcom Consulting for the financial industry, believes that banks’ concentrated suspension of credit cards is mainly driven by the continued tightening of regulatory policies. Credit card business assessments are shifting from issuance scale to asset quality and compliance operations. At the same time, with the industry’s relatively high proportion of dormant cards, and weak profitability contributions of some products, along with intensified competition in consumer credit and continuously rising customer acquisition and operating costs, banks choose to proactively optimize their product mix and clean up low-efficiency cards to reduce business costs and compliance risks. He said that the credit card market’s shift from expansion to contraction adjustments is a long-term trend. Domestic credit card penetration has already reached a high level, and with population and traffic dividends gradually fading at this stage, the expansion model of “racing to capture the market” in the past can no longer be sustained.

From scale competition to quality games

The industry’s overall contraction trend has been evidenced across multiple dimensions. From among the listed banks that disclosed data, in 2025, the credit card issuance volumes of Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China CITIC Bank, and China Construction Bank all exceeded 100 million, firmly placing them in the “over-100 million club.” However, each bank’s issuance volumes have already shown clear differentiation. The credit card issuance volumes of Bank of Communications, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and Postal Savings Bank decreased by 5.0159 million, 5 million, 3 million, and 2.1628 million cards, respectively. Among them, China Construction Bank’s credit card issuance volume has declined for 4 consecutive years: it fell from a peak of 147 million in January 2021 to 126 million in 2025, for a cumulative reduction of 21 million.

In terms of overdraft balances, the contraction is even more pronounced. The total credit card overdraft balance of 30 banks that disclosed relevant data reached 7.39 trillion yuan, down about 5.72% year-on-year. China Construction Bank is the only bank with a credit card overdraft balance exceeding 1 trillion yuan. In terms of the magnitude of change, five banks including SPDB (Shanghai Pudong Development Bank), Zhejiang Commercial Bank, and Huishang Bank saw increases, while the other 25 banks saw declines. Among the banks with larger decreases, some smaller banks saw declines exceeding 20%, facing even more severe pressure under existing stock-based competition.

Xue Hongyan, special researcher at Sushang Bank, pointed out that the widespread decline in credit card overdraft amounts reflects both a weakening of residents’ willingness to leverage and the banks’ operating logic of proactively reducing risk exposures. Faced with the pressure of rising non-performing rates in the earlier period, banks have generally adopted more prudent credit granting strategies. They have proactively cleared high-risk customer groups and controlled business scale, shifting the focus from expanding credit scale in the past to stabilizing asset quality. The fall in overdraft amounts marks the industry’s transition away from extensive growth and toward a high-quality development stage oriented toward balancing risk and return. Although in the short term it may create certain drag on credit card interest income, in the long run it is beneficial for stable and sustainable business operation.

In terms of asset quality, risk differentiation has further widened. Among listed banks that disclosed credit card non-performing rates, Dongguan Rural Commercial Bank’s credit card non-performing rate is as high as 11.03%. Zhongyuan Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Minsheng Bank, and Industrial Bank also have credit card non-performing rates all above 3%. By contrast, the non-performing rates of Postal Savings Bank, China Merchants Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, and SPDB (Shanghai Pudong Development Bank) are controlled within 2%. In terms of the magnitude of change, among 14 banks, 9 saw their non-performing rates rise and 5 saw them fall. Jin Xinian, vice president of CITIC Bank, candidly acknowledged at a recent performance meeting that mortgage-backed operating loans and credit cards are currently “difficult points” in asset quality control, though there are signs that forward-looking indicators are improving.

A banking team at Guotai Haitong Securities recently released a research report stating that in the composition of non-performing loan transfers in Q1 2026, the share of credit card loans has dropped from 25.0% in Q1 2025 to 4.1%. The pressure for disposing of non-performing credit card loans may therefore have been significantly eased. To a certain extent, this shows that after nearly two years of accelerated clearing, the asset quality bottom of the credit card industry may be gradually becoming more solid.

(Editor: Wenjing)

Keywords:

                                                            Credit card