Credit card spending in the nation fell for a second consecutive month in July, declining 7.5 percent annually to NT$335.4 billion, as consumers purchased less amid a local outbreak of COVID-19, the Financial Supervisory Commission said.
In May, when the outbreak began, credit card spending rose 11.6 percent annually to NT$239.6 billion, data released by the commission on Thursday showed.
However, credit card spending declined 9.19 percent to NT$215.3 billion in June, as the outbreak affected private consumption, the commission said.
Photo: Kelson Wang, Taipei Times
“As the number of local infections was higher than last year, consumers became more conservative, staying home and shopping outside less. Meanwhile, strict anti-virus measures such as a ban on dinning inside restaurants also led to lower spending,” the commission told a videoconference.
Although July’s credit card spending of NT$335.4 billion was down from a year earlier, it was the second-highest for that month, but the momentum came from tax payments, not regular spending, the commission said.
As the Ministry of Finance delayed the deadline for tax payments to June. 30, as it did last year, many people used their credit cards to pay their tax at the end of June, and some of the payments were recorded as July spending, it said.
For the first seven months, the nation’s cumulative credit card spending totaled NT$1.77 trillion, up 1.78 percent from a year earlier, the data showed.
Electronic payments were not affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, as they grew 43 percent year-on-year to NT$7.53 billion in July, after rising 81 percent to NT$7.78 billion in May and 55 percent to NT$7.08 billion in June, the data showed.
The number of electronic payment users stood at 14.2 million as of the end of July, up 2.3 percent from a month earlier, it showed.
As most electronic payments were small and regular, such as purchases of beverages and snacks, the pandemic would not have easily affected them, the commission said.
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