In the first quarter of this year, the amount of foreign spending by domestic cardholders decreased compared to the previous quarter. The number of overseas travelers rose, but the decrease in overseas direct purchases through online shopping impacted this.
According to the 'Card Foreign Use Performance of Residents' announced by the Bank of Korea on the 23rd, the amount spent on foreign transactions using cards (credit, debit, and check) by domestic residents in the first quarter of this year was recorded at $5.35 billion, a decrease of 5.2% from the fourth quarter of last year ($5.64 billion). This is the largest decline in three years since the first quarter of 2022 (-10.4%).
Although demand for overseas travel remained, the decrease in overseas direct purchases through online shopping contributed to this trend. Typically, overseas direct purchases increase during the fourth quarter, which is a sales season, and tend to decline in the first quarter of the following year.
In fact, the number of domestic outbound travelers in the first quarter (7.797 million) increased by 4.1% compared to the previous quarter. However, the amount spent on online shopping overseas direct purchases decreased from $1.59 billion to $1.35 billion, a decline of 15.3%.
By card type, the amount spent using credit cards ($3.65 billion) decreased by 7.1% compared to the fourth quarter of last year. The amount spent using check cards ($1.7 billion) also decreased by 0.9%.
The number of cards used for overseas payments was 17,749, a decrease of 5.8% compared to the previous quarter. The average amount spent per card was $301, an increase of 0.6% from the previous quarter. The decrease in the number of cards seems to have led to an increase in spending per card.