March 3, 2015. Russian banks issued 40% fewer cards in January 2015 compared with the start of 2014; this trend is likely to continue in February, Prime refers to the National Credit History Bureau as stating.

400,000 bank card applications were registered with the Bureau in January, compared with 650,000 a year earlier (-40%).

This has been brought about by the banks setting up stricter loan-issuing terms: lending through a bank card is one of the least secured and the riskiest type of lending, so banks are trying to decrease their share in their loan book. This is why the amount of newly issued bank cards will keep going down in February, the Bureau feels.

Most banks actually reduce the number of bank cards they operate down to the number of cardholders who get a debit card to get their salaries into this account or down to a few selected customers who have taken out consumer loans from the bank before. Interest rates have gone up considerably as well: the current range is between 25.9% and 33.9%.

The instability of the Central Bank’s rate, which stands at 15% at the moment, is another card-issuance factor.

‘As long as the possibility of the rate going up holds, banks will not risk issuing credit cards with a flat interest rate. The credit card market leaders are decreasing their risks by lowering the overdraft limits on the cards already issued. There are controversial forecasts as to how the affairs will develop: the Central Bank believes the credit card lending market will enliven as soon as late February, while the market players do not feel any recovery is likely before the summer of 2015,’ the Bureau says.