Debtors blacklisted by banks in bid to avoid credit crisis

Banks have blacklisted some 50,000 customers for defaulting on cash-card debts in the past month in a bid to avert an all-out credit crisis, a report in a Chinese-language daily said yesterday.

In August alone, banks as a whole wrote off NT$8.5 billion (US$252.75 million) in bad cash-card and credit-card loans, prompting the crackdown which was launched last month, the newspaper report said.

As of August, the total amount of outstanding consumer loans topped NT$1.4 trillion, including NT$800 billion in cash and credit-card loans, the paper said, citing figures compiled by the central bank.