Ping An Credit Card's "Stable" Mask: 86.8k Complaints in a Year, Default Rate Becomes an "Eye-Catching Issue"

Why Does the Number of Complaints About AI · Ping An Credit Card Remain High Year After Year?

Ping An Bank’s 2025 annual report shows a pattern of “both revenue and net profit declining.” Although the media characterizes it as “steady operation” and “high-quality development,” the continuous shrinkage of credit card business and the high volume of complaints reveal deep-seated concerns behind this “retail new king”’s transformation.

Ping An Bank’s disclosed 2025 annual report indicates that during the reporting period, the bank achieved operating income of 131.44B yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 10.4%; net profit of 42.63B yuan, down 4.2% year-on-year. Despite declines in both revenue and net profit, the headlines in media reports highlight two keywords for the 2025 annual report: “steady operation” and “high-quality development.”

As of press time, Ping An Bank’s “Bank News (News & Updates)” has not yet updated news about the 2025 report. From the news list, it appears that the bank has issued news updates for its 2024, 2023, and 2022 annual reports, as well as its Q1 and Q3 2025 reports. Does this mean that senior management at Ping An Bank is dissatisfied with its 2025 performance?

Ka Jia Finance notes that behind the “less-than-ideal” performance in 2025, the scale of the credit card business remains noticeably shrinking, and transaction activity has declined, becoming one of the key factors dragging down the retail sector’s performance.

By the end of 2025, Ping An Bank’s credit card circulation accounts totaled 43.6931 million, a decrease of about 3.23 million from 46.9261 million at the end of 2024, a decline of 6.9%. This marks the second consecutive year of scale contraction for the bank’s credit card business. At the end of 2024, the circulation was 46.9261 million, down approximately 6.96 million from 53.8891 million at the end of 2023, a decrease of 12.92%.

Accompanying the shrinking user base is a decline in transaction activity.

In 2025, the total consumption amount on Ping An Bank’s credit cards was 20.12435 trillion yuan, still high in absolute terms but down 3.08075 trillion yuan from 23.2051 trillion yuan in 2024, a decrease of 13.28%. Meanwhile, the balance of credit card receivables fell to 2.01T yuan, a reduction of 2.32T yuan from the end of the previous year’s 308.08B yuan, a decline of 6.8%.

Bank card fee income also took a hit. In 2025, the bank earned 405.44B yuan in bank card fee income, down 5.9% from 435B yuan in 2024. The annual report explains this mainly as a “decline in credit card business fee income.”

In terms of asset quality, there are positive signals in Ping An Bank’s credit card business. By the end of 2025, the non-performing rate of credit card receivables was 2.24%, down from 2.56% at the end of the previous year, a decrease of 0.32 percentage points. However, compared to Ping An Bank’s corporate loan NPL rate of 0.87% and personal loan NPL rate of 1.23%, the 2.24% non-performing rate for credit card loans remains the largest “eye-catching” figure.

In fact, improvements in asset quality have not reversed the overall downward trend of the business. From the perspective of income contribution, the proportion of bank card fee income in net fee and commission income has decreased from 54.6% in 2024 to 51.9% in 2025, indicating that this segment’s support for intermediary business income is weakening. Regarding the continued decline of the credit card business, Ping An Bank attributes it in the annual report to “adapting to market environment changes and adhering to a prudent operating strategy.”

The ups and downs of Ping An Bank’s credit card business aptly reflect the strategic transformation of this “retail new king” from rapid growth to strategic contraction.

Since the retail transformation wave began in 2016, credit cards, auto finance, and the new loan business have been the three spearheads of consumer finance, becoming key tools for retail breakthroughs. From 2016 to 2021, this was the golden era of Ping An’s credit card growth, with the circulation of cards rising from 30 million in July 2017 to 70.1265 million at the end of 2021, and total transaction volume reaching 3.79 trillion yuan, ranking second in the industry.

Starting in 2022, the credit card loan balance has declined for two consecutive years, falling to 29.56B yuan at the end of 2023, a sharp 17.3% decrease from its peak in 2021, making it the largest decline among listed banks on the A-share market during the same period. The non-performing rate also rose from 2.11% in 2021 to a high of 2.77% at the end of 2023 and in Q1 2024.

Under the shadow of the continuous “double decline” in credit card scale and transaction volume, complaints related to credit cards remain high, creating a stark contrast.

According to Ping An Bank’s annual report, in 2025, the bank received a total of 180,841 complaints transferred by regulatory authorities, via 95511 channels, through the credit card center, and other internal channels. Among these, complaints about credit card business accounted for 48.0%, loan business complaints 19.5%, debit card complaints 13.3%, debt collection complaints 9.7%, and bank agency business complaints 2.0%.

Based on this, it is estimated that in 2025, there were 86.8k complaints about credit card business.

For example, on April 8, a netizen on Black Cat Complaint platform reported that in their February 8, 2026, bill, the principal of 36k yuan generated interest of up to 722.9 yuan in just one month, with an annual interest rate exceeding the legal red line of 24%. They also mentioned a March bill, where in five days, 398 yuan of interest was accrued. According to the user, with 36k yuan and an annual rate of 24%, the monthly interest should be 720 yuan.

Ka Jia Finance notes that the fee standards disclosed by Ping An Bank’s credit card center show a daily interest rate of 0.05% for revolving credit (equivalent to an annualized rate of 18.25%), and a penalty fee of 5% of the minimum repayment amount when the overdraft principal exceeds 20 yuan.

On March 29, a netizen on Black Cat Complaint platform reported that Ping An Bank promoted credit card applications, promising only to pay the first-year annual fee, but in reality, they deducted 200 yuan annually for nine years, totaling 1,800 yuan. The bank did not inform the user that they needed to spend 30k yuan each year to waive the annual fee, violating the obligation to inform, and requested the bank to reduce the annual fee and cancel the card.

On March 29, Ping An Bank responded: “We will assign dedicated personnel to follow up on your issue. Please keep your phone accessible and answer calls.” On April 8, the user “confirmed completion” of the complaint and rated the service attitude and handling speed with 4 stars, with an overall satisfaction of 3 stars.

Many other users also report that Ping An Bank’s credit card center has failed to fulfill promises to buy back commemorative coins. For example, on March 18, a user reported that on May 14, 2019, they purchased a set of commemorative coins worth 19.8k yuan via installment payment with a Ping An Bank credit card. The staff had promised that the coins could be bought back and redeemed at the agreed price, and promoted the sale under the bank’s name. Now, when the user requested redemption, Ping An Bank refused to honor the buyback promise, engaging in false advertising and misleading consumers, seriously infringing on consumers’ legal rights.

The contraction of the credit card business may be an inevitable pain of Ping An Bank’s proactive “pruning of the bubble,” but the triple decline in circulation accounts, transaction volume, and fee income, combined with the persistently high complaint volume, serve as a warning: prudent operation cannot be just rhetoric on the financial statements, and high-quality development requires facing deeper issues of asset quality and user trust. Beyond the annual report, the real test has only just begun.