Consumers in Portugal took out 855 million euros in consumer credit in October, an accumulated year-on-year increase of 11.3%, while the number of new contracts rose 4%, to 157,367, the Bank of Portugal (BdP) announced today.
The information released this Wednesday, 3rd, about taking out credit for consumers considers personal credit, car credit and renewable credit, which includes credit cards, overdraft facilities and lines of credit.
In October, renewable credit was the most relevant category in terms of contracts, accounting for 58% of the total (83,376), but was only responsible for 18.2% of the total amount, with 135 million euros.
The amount of new credits had a year-on-year rate of change in the accumulated value of the last 12 months (TVHA) of 2.8%, while the number of contracts fell by 0.2%. This indicator, according to the BdP, allows us to analyze the dynamism of new consumer credit taking out.
In practice, this means that the amount of new contracts signed in the 12 months ending at the end of that month (from November 2024 to October 2025) was 2.8% higher than the value of new contracts signed in the 12 months ending in October.
In the case of car credit, the tvha was 14.2%, having risen to 335.7 million euros, as a result of 21,190 contracts (an increase of 10.2%).
In personal credit, there was a 12.0% increase in the number of new contracts, with 52,801 signed, totaling 384.3 million euros.
The BdP points out that with the exception of the period of the covid-19 pandemic, “the new amounts contracted have grown for all purposes”, with car credit being the credit category “with the highest volume since September 2023”.
The data released today also focused on the cost of credit, calculated using the global effective annual charge rate, the APR, which includes the contractual interest rate and other charges charged by the credit institution – such as commissions and taxes.
Renewable credit has the highest average contracted cost, at 17.9%, ahead of the cost of personal credit (12.0%) and automobile (10.4%).
Car credit is the credit category with the highest median amount among new contracts, and in October half had a contracted value equal to or greater than 14,400 euros, compared to 4,860 euros in personal credit and a thousand euros in renewable credit.
The average duration of the contract when purchasing cars was 7.3 years, with the shortest period being for the purchase of new cars (6.3 years, compared to 7.6 years for used cars).
The BdP also points out that the rate of use of renewable credit, which establishes a ratio between the outstanding amount and the total contracted amount, has been stable over recent years, varying between 25% and 30%. In October, 27.05% of the available renewable credit ceiling was used.
At the end of October there were 6.3 million live contracts, worth 23,659 million euros.
The majority of contracts concerned renewable credit (3.7 million contracts), which represented 17% of the total amount (4,023 million euros), while car credit represented the largest share of the amount (10,363 million euros) and personal credit had an outstanding balance of 9,273 million euros.