Hard to withstand industry challenges? State-owned bank credit card "report card": Who is the "shrinking king"?

Ask AI · What macro factors drive the contraction behind credit card business shrinkage?

With the six state-owned large banks’ 2025 performance reports rolling out one after another, the “turning point” characteristics of credit card business have become even more evident. Nandu Bay Finance and Economics reporter statistics and analysis of credit card-related data from the six state-owned banks found that in 2025, the credit card loan balances of all six banks declined, breaking the pattern of expansion by state-owned banks and contraction by joint-stock banks in prior years. In terms of asset quality, with the exception of Postal Savings Bank, the non-performing loan ratios on credit cards of the other five banks increased to varying degrees, and industry risk prevention and control pressure continued to rise.

From the perspective of the overall industry, the credit card loan scale shrank across the board, the non-performing rates generally increased, and changes in transaction scale diverged—indicating that the credit card industry has entered a period of deep adjustment. Faced with the new market environment, each bank has adjusted its business strategy, seeking a new balance between risk control and business development.

Balances shrink collectively

BOC cuts the most

Looking at stock scale, although the leading pattern of credit card business among the state-owned giants has not undergone fundamental upheaval, the overall size has shrunk collectively.

With a credit card loan balance of 1,009.1 billion yuan, China Construction Bank continues to top the group of six in terms of balance, and is also the only bank whose balance remains above 1 trillion yuan; however, its scale has shown a clear pullback, down 56.78B yuan from 1,065.883 billion yuan at the end of 2024, a year-on-year decline of 5.33%. Close behind is Agricultural Bank with a balance of 850.09B yuan, ranking second. Amid the industry-wide downturn, it has displayed stronger business resilience: over the full year it fell by only 8.72B yuan, an off-amount decline of just 1.02%, the smallest scale contraction among the six banks.

Industrial and Commercial Bank ranks third with 697.54B yuan, but its scale decline is significant: it decreased by 77.83B yuan for the full year, with a decline rate of 10.04%. Bank of Communications has 531.35B yuan and Bank of China 209.43B yuan, ranking fourth and fifth, respectively; Postal Savings Bank sits at the bottom with 593.4B yuan, further widening the gap in scale from the top-tier banks.

In terms of the magnitude of year-on-year change, the adjustment pace among the six banks shows distinct differentiation, and differences in strategic choices among banks stand out. Bank of China has become the bank with the most aggressive actions in this round of adjustment: its credit card loan balance dropped sharply from 486.01B yuan at the end of 2024 to 107.4B yuan, reducing by 238.22B yuan over the full year, a decline of as much as 18.10%. Whether measured by absolute reduction or decline rate, it ranks first among the six banks.

Postal Savings Bank follows next: its balance fell from 209.43B yuan to 28.79B yuan, down 32.12B yuan, a decline of 12.09%, making it the second-largest contraction. With a decline rate of 10.04%, Industrial and Commercial Bank became the third bank whose decline exceeded 10%. By contrast, China Construction Bank, with a decline rate of 5.33%, is around the industry’s middle level, while Bank of Communications and Agricultural Bank have become the industry’s “stabilizers,” with small declines of 1.31% and 1.02%, respectively, basically maintaining stability in business scale.

Industry insiders point out that the collective shrinkage of state-owned large banks’ credit card business in 2025 is the result of multiple factors resonating together. On one hand, against a macro backdrop in which consumption is still recovering, banks proactively tighten credit card credit lines and reduce high-risk exposures, which is an active choice to prevent credit risk and optimize asset quality. On the other hand, the regulator’s continuously upgraded compliance requirements for credit card business has also pushed banks to accelerate the exit from non-compliant and low-quality customer groups, driving the industry’s transition from “scale expansion” to “quality first.”

Asset quality under pressure

Postal Savings Bank is the only one with a “double decline” highlight

Alongside the collective contraction in credit card loan scale, the asset quality of the credit card business of the six state-owned banks has also come under broad pressure; only Postal Savings Bank achieved a “double decline” in both non-performing balance and non-performing rate.

From the perspective of non-performing loan ratios, Industrial and Commercial Bank remains in first place among the six banks at 4.61%, up sharply by 1.11 percentage points from 3.5% at the end of 2024, indicating a significant increase in risk pressure. Bank of Communications and China Construction Bank come next: by the end of 2025, their non-performing loan ratios were 2.68% and 2.36%, respectively; year-on-year they rose by 0.34 and 0.14 percentage points, and asset quality continued to face pressure.

Bank of China and Agricultural Bank also saw their non-performing rates rise in parallel, increasing from 1.73% and 1.46% at the end of 2024 to 2.18% and 1.88%, respectively; year-on-year they increased by 0.45 and 0.42 percentage points, with their risk exposures continuing to expand. Only Postal Savings Bank moved against the trend: its non-performing loan ratio edged down from 1.48% to 1.45%, with a year-on-year decrease of 0.03 percentage points, maintaining a downward trend amid the industry’s generally upward movement.

From the dimension of non-performing loan balances, most state-owned banks show a pattern of “both volume and ratio rising” overall, with only Postal Savings Bank seeing a decline in balance. The non-performing balance scale and growth rate of Industrial and Commercial Bank both lead among the six: by the end of 2025 it reached 4.95B yuan, up 12.53B yuan from the end of 2024, a year-on-year growth of as much as 18.21%. The sharp expansion of its non-performing scale further exacerbated its asset quality pressure.

Agricultural Bank, with a year-on-year increase rate of 27.3%, became the state-owned bank with the fastest growth in balance: non-performing balance rose from 15.96B yuan to 3.42B yuan, increasing by 14.22B yuan over the full year. Bank of Communications’ non-performing balance reached 1.63B yuan, up 339M yuan year-on-year, a growth rate of 12.96%. Non-performing balances of Bank of China and China Construction Bank also increased slightly—by 3.03B yuan and 0.18 billion yuan, respectively—with growth rates of 3.30% and 0.76%.

Postal Savings Bank, however, became the only institution to record a decline in balance: its non-performing balance fell from 3.52 billion yuan to 495M yuan, decreasing by 0.495 billion yuan year-on-year, a decline of 14.06%.

Transactions diverge, card volume shrinks

Banks accelerate transformation to break through

Against the backdrop of a saturated market and intensified homogeneous competition among consumer credit products, the transformation pressure on the credit card business of the six state-owned banks in 2025 became even more pronounced. Overall, the industry presents an adjustment pattern of “transaction scale diverging and card issuance volume continuously shrinking,” and the battle to break out in the era of stock competition has already begun.

From the perspective of credit card transaction scale, the leading advantage of top banks remains solid, but their growth rates face pressure. China Construction Bank, with total consumer transaction volume of 2.56 trillion yuan, continues to rank first in the industry. Although it was about 8.57% lower year-on-year than 2.80 trillion yuan in 2024, it still firmly maintains the leading position amid the industry-wide downturn. Bank of Communications comes next, holding the core position of the second echelon with cumulative consumer amounts of 2.18 trillion yuan. Agricultural Bank’s full-year credit card consumption exceeded 2 trillion yuan, slightly down year-on-year from 2.2 trillion yuan in 2024. Industrial and Commercial Bank’s 2025 credit card consumption was 1.83 trillion yuan.

In addition, the adjustment intensity of Bank of China’s credit card business is relatively clear: in 2025, its credit card consumption was 1.1 trillion yuan, down about 14.7% year-on-year from 1.29 trillion yuan in 2024. At the same time, credit card installment transaction value fell to 25.6k yuan, sharply down 36.01% from 346.68 billion yuan in the previous year; the shrinking of installment business may become an important factor behind the decline in its transaction scale.

The continuous reduction in credit card card-volume scale is one of the most distinctive features of the industry in 2025, continuing the contraction trend since 2024. By the end of 2025, Industrial and Commercial Bank’s total card issuance volume for bank cards reached 1.32 billion cards, up 36.53 million from the end of the previous year, but its credit card issuance volume was 145 million cards, down from 150 million at the end of 2024.

By the end of 2025, China Construction Bank had 101 million cumulative credit card customers and issued 126 million cards. Compared with 129 million cards at the end of 2024, it shrank by 3 million cards; the customer and card-volume scales were adjusted in tandem with only minor tweaks. By the end of 2025, Bank of China’s cumulative credit card issuance reached 150.0975 million cards (about 150 million), temporarily becoming the institution with the most card issuance among the six state-owned large banks. By the end of 2025, Bank of Communications’ onshore credit card cards on record totaled 57.9935 million, down about 5 million from 63.0094 million at the end of the previous year.

Faced with deep adjustment and transformation pressure in the credit card market, the six banks have all adjusted their business strategies, seeking a new balance between strict risk control and stable development, and exploring differentiated breakthrough paths.

In its annual report, China Construction Bank explicitly stated that its credit card loan business is tightly aligned with national policy guidance such as “trading in the old for the new” and “promoting high-quality development of consumption.” The bank proactively cooperates with leading merchants in popular industries, actively takes advantage of favorable measures such as policy subsidies and the issuance of consumer vouchers, and precisely matches with consumer demand. Meanwhile, the bank’s credit card business fully focuses on core installment products such as car purchases, home renovations, and installment “pass-through” products; it strengthens precise marketing in payment processes. Especially in the new energy vehicle purchase sector, it has performed outstandingly: it has carried out head-to-head cooperation with 16 new energy vehicle manufacturers, covering more than 80 mainstream brands. By leveraging deep engagement with scenarios, it improves business quality.

Agricultural Bank, meanwhile, adheres to a direction of steady credit card business development. Under the premise of strictly guarding the risk bottom line, it continuously optimizes the credit card asset structure, improves service quality and customer experience, and steadily advances business transformation. Bank of Communications has launched a deep reform of its credit card business model: it has abandoned the previous mode of centralized direct operation, shifted to branch-level local operations, and brought the credit card business fully into the mobile banking retail business system for unified operation and management. Through resource integration, it enhances its comprehensive financial service capability and addresses the predicament of homogeneous competition.

Byline: Nandu · Bay Finance and Economics reporter Ma Qing, intern He Yunyi