Macao's personal credit cards exceed 350,000 in Q3

There were a total of 351,420 personal credit cards in circulation in the third quarter of 2009,slightly increasing by 4.28 percent from the previous quarter, according to the figures released on Monday by the Monetary Authority of Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR).

The numbers of Pataca cards, HKD cards and RMB cards were 281,616, 55,561 and 14,243 respectively in the period, which went up by 3.2 percent, 0.54 percent and 61.1 percent quarter-to-quarter, the figures showed.

Credit card credit limit granted by banks in Macao amounted to 6.41 billion patacas (811 million U.S. dollars) at the end of the third quarter, down 4.09 percent from the previous quarter. Credit card receivables reached 1.03 billion patacas, with a delinquency ratio of 1.32 percent in the period.

In the third quarter of this year, the credit card turnover edged up slightly by 5.63 percent from the previous quarter to 1.61 billion patacas (204 million U.S. dollars), while credit card repayments, including payments for interest and fees, grew by 13.37 percent from the previous quarter to 1.68 billion patacas (213 million U.S. dollars) in the third quarter, according to the Monetary Authority.

Source: Xinhua