APRA's crackdown in the home loan sector is producing spill-over effects in the payments market, with experts attributing part of the slide in credit card market share to the regulator's macro-prudential intervention.The latest official data published by the Reserve Bank shows growth in debit card activity continues to outpace credit and charge card spending. Analysis of the January 2019 data by MWE Consulting found that credit and charge card purchases accounted for 51.5 per cent of card-based spending compared to 48.5 per cent for debit cards.In January last year the market share of credit and charge cards stood at 53.4 per cent.MWE managing director Mike Ebstein believes the tightening of loan assessment standards in the mortgage market has created incentives for homebuyers to bin credit and charge card accounts."Holding one or more credit cards can affect the eligible loan sizes of prospective home borrowers," he said."There is little doubt that the closure of credit card accounts in order to maximise the capacity for mortgage sizes has been a key dynamic in the payments market in the last 12 months."According to the RBA, the number of credit and charge card accounts held by Australian consumers and businesses declined by 820,000 in the year to the end of January.Pressure on the credit card schemes could intensify this year as mortgage brokers advise prospective home borrowers to slash the credit limits on their cards.For many borrowers on average incomes the simple act of lowering credit limits can add up to A$50,000 to the loan values they can apply for.Outstanding balances on credit and charge cards stood at $50.5 billion at the end of January - down $1 billion on the same time in 2018.Ebstein expects the trend away from credit card spending to continue over the next 12 months, with the value of debit purchases expected to become the dominant payments mode early next year.The data indicates that AMEX's charge card business is suffering bigger customer losses than the credit card operations of Visa and MasterCard.The combined market share of the three-party schemes rose to a near-record 85.5 per cent in January as AMEX and Diners' Club fell to 14.5 per cent."The demise of companion card programs with the major banks is continuing to hurt AMEX," Ebstein said."AMEX has not been able to retrieve through its proprietary operations the loss in balances from the decisions of banks to phase out the companion cards."The RBA data indicates that the launch of the New Payments Platform and real time payments has hastened the decline of cheques as a payments medium. Australian consumers and businesses made $43 billion worth of cheque payments in January - down more than 40 per cent compared to a year ago.The NPP processed $10.7 billion of payments in January compared to zero in the same month last year.