Credit cards in circulation will hit above 100 million in South Korea this year, nearly doubling its population of 51 million.

According to data released by Financial Supervisory Service on Tuesday, a total of 99.46 million credit cards were in circulation as of the end of 2017, adding 4 percent or 3.82 million from a year earlier.

New issues have been adding an average 2 million to 3 million in recent years.

Plastic-financed spending reached 788.1 trillion won ($736.2 billion) last year, up 5.6 percent, or 42.1 trillion won from a year earlier. Card loans rose 0.5 percent, or 500 billion won, to 95.4 trillion won - 59.3 trillion won for cash advance and 39.1 trillion won for long-term loans.

The bottom line for card issuers, however, deteriorated.

Eight non-banking credit card issuers reported 1.227 trillion won in net income in 2017, down 32.3 percent, or 586.4 billion won from a year ago. It fell from 2.2 trillion won in 2014 to 2 trillion won in 2015 and 1.8 trillion won in 2016. The deterioration is in line with wider enforcement on favorable fees for merchants and stricter loss reserve requirement.

Delinquency rate of the issuers improved by 0.07 percentage point to 1.37 percent as of late 2017.

By Oh Chan-jong and Lee Ha-yeon

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]