More than 45 credit cards were suspended during the year, and the number of credit card issuances dropped sharply by 111 million in three years.

Since the beginning of 2026, the banking industry has ushered in an unprecedented wave of credit card slimming down. A number of mainstream institutions, including Agricultural Bank of China, China Minsheng Banking Corporation, Bank of Communications, China Guangfa Bank, etc., have issued numerous announcements announcing the suspension of issuance of many of their credit card products.

According to preliminary statistics, more than 45 credit card products have been included in the suspension list during the year, among which co-branded credit cards and theme credit cards have become the hardest hit areas. This intensive action sends a clear signal: banks are accelerating adjustments to their original card issuance strategies.

The authoritative data released by the central bank confirms the overall contraction trend of the industry. As of the end of 2025, the number of credit cards and debit cards nationwide has dropped to 696 million. Compared with the historical peak of 807 million cards at the end of the third quarter of 2022, there has been a cumulative decrease of 111 million cards, and the scale of card issuance has directly returned to the level of about seven years ago.

Behind this change is a fundamental shift in industry logic. With the full implementation of the new credit card regulations in July 2024, the banking industry has officially transitioned from the past incremental competition to the era of existing games.

At the same time, the non-performing rate of credit card businesses of many listed banks is rising, which also forces financial institutions to re-examine the balance between risks and returns. Large-scale cleanup of substandard or low-vitality products has become an inevitable choice to control costs and risks.

Senior banking industry researchers point out that in the past, simply pursuing growth in card issuance numbers actually resulted in many bubbles in a statistical sense. A large number of dormant cards that have been idle for a long time not only fail to generate transaction volume and interest income, but continue to consume the bank's operating resources and risk control limits.

After the new regulations were implemented, banks began to clear out these sleep cards in batches, resulting in a sharp decline in statistics. This downsizing is essentially squeezing out water and concentrating resources on serving high-value users by streamlining product lines, thereby improving the health of the overall business.

This transformation from quantity to quality means that the credit card industry is bidding farewell to extensive growth. The focus of competition in the future will no longer be who issues more cards, but who can increase cardholder activity and loyalty through more refined operations.

By proactively discontinuing underperforming products, banks can effectively reduce redundancy costs and instead invest their energy in core products that are more competitive in the market. This battle for survival is pushing China's credit card market to develop in a more mature and rational direction.