HKMA Payment Card Statistics: Inside the Q2 2026 Card Data

On 18 September 2026 the Hong Kong Monetary Authority published its payment card statistics for the second quarter of 2026, and the headline is a large round number: 31.03 million credit cards in circulation by the end of the quarter. The HKMA payment card statistics look like a simple scoreboard, but every line on the page counts something specific, and the specificity is where a reader who reports or benchmarks against this series can go wrong.

The release is a quarterly data series, first published in June 2010, that the HKMA compiles from data on credit and debit cards issued in Hong Kong under the schemes of eight payment card scheme operators. The HKMA publishes the series to enhance transparency of the payment card industry. The underlying operator data collection is conducted under the non-legally-binding Code of Practice for Payment Card Scheme Operators, so the public release should be distinguished from the statutory PSSVFO oversight regime. Reading the series well means knowing which cards are inside each total, which operators are excluded from each figure, and how transaction counts and values can move differently.

This is a Hong Kong data set governed by Hong Kong definitions. The figures do not map one-for-one onto European or Australian card statistics, and the collection sits alongside, but is separate from, the statutory oversight the HKMA exercises over the major card schemes under the Payment Systems and Stored Value Facilities Ordinance. Both points matter the moment anyone tries to use the numbers as evidence.

Related reading: Hong Kong SVF licensing and reporting regime

The Q2 2026 figures at a glance

The quarter’s headline numbers, taken from the HKMA release and its annex, are worth placing side by side. Credit cards in circulation reached 31.03 million at end-Q2 2026, up 6.3% on the previous quarter and 36.1% year on year. The number of credit card transactions rose 4.9% to 403.94 million for the quarter, while the value moved in the opposite direction, falling 8.0% to HK$286.5 billion. Of that transaction value, HK$186.7 billion (65.2%) was retail spending in Hong Kong, HK$91.1 billion (31.8%) retail spending overseas and HK$8.8 billion (3.1%) cash advances.

The debit card picture tells a different story. The series recorded 55.39 million debit card transactions for retail sales and bill payments in Q2 2026, up 5.2% on the quarter but down 4.3% year on year; the value was HK$61.1 billion, down 13.6% on the quarter and 8.0% year on year. One figure is simply absent: the HKMA does not publish a total for debit cards in circulation, because overlapping debit card brands on a single card prevent an accurate aggregate total.

For context, the first quarter of 2026 recorded 29.18 million credit cards in circulation, 384.94 million credit card transactions worth HK$311.3 billion, and 52.65 million debit card transactions worth HK$70.8 billion. The quarter-on-quarter percentages in this release are measured against those Q1 figures.

Who feeds the numbers: the eight card scheme operators

The series is compiled from data on cards issued in Hong Kong by both authorized institutions and non-authorized institutions, under the credit and debit card schemes of eight operators. Listed alphabetically, they are American Express International, Discover Financial Services (Hong Kong), EPS Company (Hong Kong) known as EPSCO, JCB International (Asia), Joint Electronic Teller Services known as JETCO, MasterCard Asia/Pacific, UnionPay International, and Visa Worldwide.

The scope criterion stated by the HKMA is whether the card was issued in Hong Kong under one of the eight operators’ schemes. Foreign-issued cards used at Hong Kong merchants are therefore outside this series. The release does not define scope by cardholder residence, so the series should not be used to infer tourist or visitor spending or all card activity at Hong Kong merchants.

The inclusion of non-authorized institutions is easy to skim past and important to keep. Card issuing in Hong Kong is not confined to licensed banks, so the totals capture issuers that sit outside the banking supervisory perimeter. A reader who assumes the series only reflects the retail banks will understate the population it describes.

Why the operator list is not the same as the oversight list

Eight operators feed the statistics. Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay International and American Express were designated as retail payment systems with effect from 4 August 2017, and the systems operated by JETCO and EPSCO were designated on 31 August 2018. The HKMA’s 2025 annual report lists six designated retail payment systems: American Express, EPSCO, JETCO, Mastercard, UnionPay International and Visa. Discover Financial Services (Hong Kong) and JCB International (Asia) are in the eight-operator statistical population but are not among those six designated systems. The statistical and designation perimeters therefore differ, but not on a four-versus-eight basis.

What “credit cards in circulation” actually counts

The circulation figure counts cards with a credit function that have been issued in Hong Kong under the operators’ credit card schemes. Two exclusions and one quirk sit inside it. EPSCO and JETCO are excluded from the circulation count because they do not operate a credit card scheme. A credit card issued in Hong Kong carries only one credit card brand, so brand overlap does not inflate the count the way it does for debit cards. And some of these credit cards also carry a debit function that lets the holder pay or withdraw cash by directly debiting a bank account, so a single plastic can straddle both product worlds.

Circulation is a stock measured at the end of the quarter, and it says nothing about how many of those cards saw any use. A card counts whether or not it was used during the period, which is why the 36.1% year-on-year rise in cards outstanding does not translate into a matching jump in transactions. The release reports the increase without attributing it to a cause, and the honest read is to report it the same way: cards in issue grew, and the data set does not tell you why. Reaching for an explanation the HKMA did not give, whether new issuers, cross-boundary demand or a methodology change, is the kind of inference that turns a clean statistic into an unsupported claim.

Number versus value: reading the transaction lines

Credit card transactions cover both retail sales and cash advances made through credit card accounts of cards issued in Hong Kong, again excluding EPSCO and JETCO. The quarter shows the two measures moving in opposite directions. The number of transactions rose 4.9% to 403.94 million, while the value fell 8.0% to HK$286.5 billion. Year on year the picture is gentler, with number up 12.2% and value up 6.8%.

A count rising while value falls is not a contradiction. The HKMA cautions that the number and value of credit card transactions are susceptible to seasonal factors and the general economic environment, making the trends more prone to fluctuation. The release does not attribute the Q2 2026 value decline to any specific cause. The quarter-on-quarter fall of 8.0% should therefore be reported alongside the 6.8% year-on-year increase without treating seasonality as the identified explanation for the quarter’s move.

The value line also carries a spending-location split that only exists because the HKMA started publishing it in March 2015. In Q2 2026, of total credit card transaction value, HK$186.7 billion (65.2%) related to retail spending in Hong Kong, HK$91.1 billion (31.8%) to retail spending overseas and HK$8.8 billion (3.1%) to cash advances. Anyone comparing this quarter’s Hong Kong-versus-overseas mix against a period before March 2015 is comparing against a series that did not yet report the breakdown, and the two are not like-for-like.

The debit card gap and the double-counting trap

The single most misused feature of this release is the absence of a debit card circulation figure. The HKMA does not publish a total number of debit cards in circulation, and it says why: debit card brands overlap on a single card, so a straightforward count would double-count the plastic. There is no missing number to chase and no proxy to substitute. A benchmark that needs “debit cards in issue in Hong Kong” cannot be sourced from this series, full stop.

What the release does report for debit is transaction activity tied to retail sales and bill payments, made by directly debiting cardholders’ bank accounts. In Q2 2026 that was 55.39 million transactions, up 5.2% on the quarter, and HK$61.1 billion by value, down 13.6% on the quarter. Year on year, the number of debit transactions fell 4.3% and the value fell 8.0% against Q2 2025. Unlike the quarter-on-quarter comparison, the transaction count was also down. As with credit cards, some of the eight operators do not run a debit card scheme, so the debit lines rest on a narrower base than the operator list suggests.

The trap that catches analysts is addition. The HKMA expressly says care should be exercised when combining credit card retail-sales figures with debit card retail-sales and bill-payment figures because of the possibility of double counting. Earlier HKMA notes illustrate the mechanism: a credit-card purchase followed by payment of the credit-card bill by debit payment can appear in both series. A simple sum should therefore not be presented as a clean measure of total card retail spending unless the potential overlap has been identified and treated explicitly.

How the series sits alongside the PSSVFO oversight regime

It is worth separating the public release from the underlying data collection. The HKMA has published the aggregate payment card statistics quarterly since June 2010 to enhance transparency of the payment card industry, in line with international practice. The underlying collection sits under the Code of Practice for Payment Card Scheme Operators: the Code provides for scheme operators to submit relevant statistics or information to the HKMA, and states that it is not legally binding. The quarterly release is therefore not a statutory PSSVFO return, but the underlying collection does have a named reporting framework.

The statutory scaffolding for card payment systems sits in a separate place. The Payment Systems and Stored Value Facilities Ordinance, Cap. 584, commenced on 13 November 2015 when the former Clearing and Settlement Systems Ordinance was re-titled and expanded. The Ordinance gives the HKMA two distinct powers: a mandatory licensing regime for multi-purpose stored value facilities, and the power to designate retail payment systems and oversee their safe and robust operation. A retail payment system, in the Ordinance’s framing, is broadly a system or arrangement for transferring, clearing or settling payment obligations arising from retail activities carried out principally by individuals.

Under that designation power, the HKMA designated the systems operated by Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay International and American Express with effect from 4 August 2017, and designated the systems operated by JETCO and EPSCO on 31 August 2018. The six systems listed as designated in the HKMA’s 2025 annual report are subject to HKMA oversight and the applicable obligations under Cap. 584. Those six operators therefore appear both in the eight-operator statistical population and in the designated-RPS perimeter as at 31 December 2025. The quarterly payment-card statistics and the statutory designation regime remain distinct. For the licensing half of the same Ordinance, our Hong Kong SVF licensing and reporting regime guide walks through the stored value facility obligations that run in parallel.

What the series does not tell you

Every quarterly release invites over-reading, so it helps to be blunt about the edges of this one. It does not report merchant service charges or interchange, so it cannot answer questions about the cost of acceptance. It does not report fraud, chargebacks or disputed volumes. It does not break the totals down by issuer, so it will not reveal any single bank’s card book. It counts cards issued in Hong Kong only, so it is silent on foreign-issued cards used in the city. And it reports the Hong Kong-versus-overseas spending split only from March 2015 onward.

Those limits are what separate a transparency series from a granular supervisory collection. A useful comparison is Sweden’s RBFS 2025:1 reporting framework. As at 22 September 2026 it is in test reporting and is due to enter into force and begin applying on 1 October 2026, with the credit-transfer reporting provisions applying from 1 October 2027. The regulation covers card-based payment transactions and quantity items including cards, payment accounts, POS terminals, e-money card terminals and ATMs; fraud is not listed as a reporting item in RBFS 2025:1. Our note on Riksbank payment statistics reporting covers that framework.

The European interchange and scheme-separation rules go further still into the mechanics of how a card transaction is processed, which our explainer on card scheme and processing separation under the IFR covers. The HKMA series publishes a relatively narrow set of aggregate card-issuance and transaction measures on a quarterly basis. For the HKMA’s other public payment data touchpoints, the authority’s separate Faster Payment System operational notices belong to the same transparency family as the card statistics, separate from the supervisory track.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are cards issued outside Hong Kong but used in Hong Kong shops included in these figures?

No. The statistics count cards issued in Hong Kong under the eight operators’ schemes. A card issued by an overseas bank and tapped at a Hong Kong merchant is outside the series, which is why the data is not a measure of visitor or tourist card spending in the city.

Do mobile wallet and tokenised card payments show up in the numbers?

The release does not separately identify mobile wallet or tokenised transactions, and it does not state how they are treated. Where a comparison depends on knowing whether a device-based or tokenised payment is captured, the safe course is to record that the release does not specify it and to avoid assuming it is either included or excluded.

Is EPS a credit card scheme?

No. EPSCO and JETCO do not operate credit card schemes, which is why both are excluded from the credit cards in circulation figure and the credit card transaction figures. They nevertheless remain among the eight operators in the statistical population.

Can I add the credit card retail sales value to the debit card retail sales value to get total card retail spending?

Not as a simple unadjusted total. The HKMA cautions that combining the two involves a possibility of double counting; its earlier explanatory note gives the example of a credit-card purchase followed by payment of that credit-card bill by debit payment. Any combined measure should therefore explain and address the potential overlap rather than simply add the two rows.

Why did credit cards in circulation jump 36.1% year on year when transactions rose only 12.2%?

Circulation is a stock of cards in issue measured at quarter-end, while transactions measure use during the quarter, so the two do not have to move together. The release reports the increase in cards outstanding without attributing it to a cause, so the growth should be cited as a fact of the series rather than explained with a reason the HKMA did not give.

Where is the raw quarterly data, and when does the next release come out?

The figures are published in the annex to the HKMA’s quarterly payment-card release. The series is quarterly; the Q2 2026 release itself does not state a fixed publication date for the Q3 2026 release.

Related Articles

Readers working across Hong Kong’s payment regulatory landscape will find context in several related explainers. The Hong Kong SVF Licensing and Reporting Regime walks through how stored value facility licensing and ongoing reporting work under the same PSSVFO that governs designated retail payment systems. For how the HKMA communicates operational payment changes, the HKMA Faster Payment System Enhancement note is a useful contrast. The Riksbank Payment Statistics Reporting explainer describes a statutory card and payment statistics return that illustrates how much further a mandatory collection reaches. For EU comparisons, the Card Scheme and Processing Separation Under the IFR covers the processing mechanics the HKMA statistics do not touch, and the HKMA and MAS Cross-Border Banking Supervision article provides the supervisory framing around Hong Kong’s payments and banking oversight.

Key Takeaways

The Q2 2026 data rewards careful reading of several numbers in sequence. Credit cards in circulation reached 31.03 million at end-Q2 2026, up 6.3% on the quarter and 36.1% on the year; the release does not attribute a cause to that increase. Transactions and value diverged for the quarter: 403.94 million transactions (up 4.9%) and HK$286.5 billion in value (down 8.0%). The HKMA cautions that transaction number and value are susceptible to seasonal factors and the general economic environment, but it does not identify seasonality as the cause of the Q2 value decline; the same value measure was up 6.8% year on year. Of total credit card transaction value, 65.2% was Hong Kong retail spending, 31.8% overseas retail spending and 3.1% cash advances; the Hong Kong-versus-overseas retail-sales breakdown has been published since March 2015.

On the debit side, two structural facts matter more than any single quarter’s figures. There is no published debit cards in circulation figure because brands overlap on one card, so this series cannot supply or estimate that number. And the credit-card retail-sales and debit-card retail-sales and bill-payment figures should not be presented as a simple combined total without addressing the HKMA’s warning that combining them may double count some underlying activity.

Stepping back from the figures: the series counts cards issued in Hong Kong only, which excludes foreign-issued cards used in the city and makes it unsuitable as a visitor-spending gauge. The HKMA has published the aggregate statistics quarterly since June 2010 to enhance transparency, while the underlying operator data collection sits under the non-legally-binding Code of Practice for Payment Card Scheme Operators. Separately, Visa, Mastercard, UnionPay International and American Express were designated as retail payment systems from 4 August 2017, and JETCO and EPSCO were designated on 31 August 2018. Discover Financial Services (Hong Kong) and JCB International (Asia) are in the eight-operator statistical population but are not among the six systems listed as designated in the HKMA’s 2025 annual report.

Sources and References

• Hong Kong Monetary Authority, “Statistics of Payment Cards Issued in Hong Kong for Second Quarter 2026”, press release and annex, 18 September 2026: hkma.gov.hk
• Hong Kong Monetary Authority, “Statistics of Payment Cards Issued in Hong Kong for First Quarter 2026”, annex, 18 June 2026: hkma.gov.hk (PDF)
• Government of the HKSAR, “Designation of retail payment systems implemented”, 4 August 2017: info.gov.hk
• Hong Kong Monetary Authority, “Designation of retail payment systems” (JETCO and EPSCO), 31 August 2018: hkma.gov.hk
• Government of the HKSAR, “Regulatory regime for stored value facilities and retail payment systems commences operation”, 13 November 2015: info.gov.hk
• Payment Systems and Stored Value Facilities Ordinance (Cap. 584), Hong Kong e-Legislation: elegislation.gov.hk
• Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Regulatory Regime for Retail Payment Systems: hkma.gov.hk
• Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Code of Practice for Payment Card Scheme Operators: hkma.gov.hk (PDF)
• Sveriges Riksbank, RBFS 2025:1 Regulations on Reporting Payment Statistics (English translation): riksbank.se (PDF)

Reading the next release without over-reading it

When the third-quarter 2026 card statistics land, the discipline is the same one this quarter rewards: read each line for what it counts, keep the credit and debit series apart unless you adjust for overlap, and resist explaining a stock movement the HKMA left unexplained. The figures are a quarterly window on credit cards issued in Hong Kong and transaction activity on Hong Kong-issued credit and debit cards within the series’ stated scope. The next decision they should drive is a narrow one: confirm which of your benchmarks actually needs cards-issued-in-Hong-Kong data before citing this series as the source.

Disclaimer: The information on RegReportingDesk.com is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute legal, regulatory, tax, or compliance advice. Always consult your compliance officer, legal counsel, or the relevant supervisory authority for guidance specific to your institution.