The number of unused credit cards in South Korea continued its downturn last month on financial authorities' stepped-up efforts to reduce inactive cards in the market, data showed Wednesday.

The number of dormant credit cards fell 15.4 percent on-year to 8.34 million at the end of June, according to data compiled by the Credit Finance Association. A dormant credit card refers to one that has not been used for at least one year.

The association expected the figure to go down to around 7 million at the end of the year.

It is the first time that the number of dormant credit cards fell below the 9 million-mark since the association first started collecting such data in 2005.

The number has been on a steady decline since it peaked at 31 million in 2011. From there it dropped to 13.4 million in 2013 and 9.85 million in 2014, according to the data.

The financial regulator announced a set of measures to drag down the number of dormant cards in order to prevent credit risks to local card firms. It has forced local credit card issuers to automatically terminate cards that have been inactive for the past 12 consecutive months. (Yonhap)