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Credit cards in China are becoming a complete white elephant as smartphone payments become second nature to Chinese consumers. Their very existence is widely projected to meet its ultimate end before long. / Economic Daily (Jingji Ribao).

Credit cards, which hold sway as a dominant payment method across global consumer markets, have struggled to gain traction in China and are now facing the verge of extinction. While they managed to stay afloat over the past decade under the overwhelming dominance of smartphone-based mobile payments, forecasts increasingly suggest their very existence is heading toward an ultimate demise.

According to Beijing sources well-versed in global economic intelligence on the 6th, credit cards hold little sway in China's payment ecosystem. It is fair to say their status falls far below that of cash, fitting the description of a marginalized payment method or an unwanted nuisance. Their trajectory mirrors that of pagers, which quietly vanished at the end of the last century with the rise of mobile phones before ever fully taking off.

Looking ahead, their presence is projected to be completely erased. Moving past the reality of vanishing faster than cash, credit cards are expected to meet an outright end. The hard data reflects this trajectory: according to statistics released in early September by the People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, the total volume of credit cards in China was estimated at 677 million as of the end of the second quarter this year. Compared to 807 million in the third quarter of 2022, the count plummeted by as much as 130 million.

A comparison with the beginning of the year yields even starker numbers, with the PBOC confirming a decline of 20 million cards. Simple arithmetic shows cards disappearing at a rate of roughly 111,000 per day. If this pace persists, shrinking below 500 million cards before 2030 appears inevitable even by conservative estimates. Should the contraction accelerate, the total could easily plunge to the 300-to-400-million range. Considering that South Korea had approximately 140 million cards at the end of 2025, the gravity of this shrinkage becomes immediately apparent.

A deeper problem lies in the reality that even the cards remaining in circulation are largely inactive. Not only do few consumers pay by card, but merchants accepting them are equally scarce. Anecdotes of foreign tourists traveling in China and finding themselves unable to use credit cards have long ceased to be mere jokes. The reality that panhandlers across the continent largely solicit alms via smartphone QR codes further underscores this environment.

Compounding the issue is that new card issuances nationwide have slowed to negligible levels, rendering the credit card ecosystem essentially nominal. Zhao Yuxin, who operates a restaurant in Wangjing, Chaoyang District, Beijing, remarked, "Our restaurant technically accepts credit cards, but almost no customers pay with them. While a few occasionally pay in cash, the vast majority of payments go through smartphones." His question regarding why credit cards are even necessary captures the broader sentiment. It is fair to conclude that the death of the credit card has become an undeniable reality in China.

                                                                                                          Hong Soon-do