Women use their debit cards less frequently, reveals RBI survey

This piece of information may give you some insight into how women deal with money. The Reserve Bank of India, in a survey, has found that they use their debit cards less frequently.

What one could deduce from this finding is that women prefer to use credit cards for shopping to avail themselves of the 45-day credit period. But when it comes to hard cash for daily needs, it is the hubby who swipes the debit card at an ATM.

“Women may be smarter when it comes to money matters. The 45-day free credit period that comes with shopping with a credit card is an irresistible attraction,” said Mr Sanjay Sharma, Managing Director IDBI Intech, a banking and financial service technology provider.

The number of debit and credit cards outstanding as at September-end 2011 was 25 crore and 1.76 crore respectively. Some of the other findings of the RBI's survey to assess customer satisfaction in the usage of ATMs across the country are: the use of cards for shopping was more among the youth; the use of debit cards for shopping was the highest in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.

Further, debit cards were mainly used for withdrawing cash or shopping purposes and the use of these cards for bills payment/ticket purchase was still low. The survey covered 600 ATMs distributed proportionately over metro, urban, semi-urban and rural regions, constituting one per cent of the total number of 60,000 ATMs in the country.