Credit card use has been on the rise for several years, and new data from the Federal Reserve Board shows that the trend is accelerating.
Last year, consumers used credit cards for 37.3 billion transactions, up 10.2% from 2015, according to Fed data released last week. That compares with 8.1% annual growth between 2012 and 2015.
In contrast, growth in the use of debit cards slowed last year. The number of debit card transactions increased 6% last year from the year before, to 73.8 billion, compared with 7.2% growth between 2012 and 2015.
From a credit union perspective, credit card lending as of October 2017 stood at $55.6 billion, a 7.9 percent year-over-year increase, and a 16.3 percent lift from where things stood in October 2015, according to CUNA Mutual Group's latest Credit Union Trends Report. Consumer installment credit balances at CUs – comprising auto, credit card and other unsecured loans – rose by only 0.8 percent in October 2017, slower than the 1.7 percent pace set in October 2016, "due to deceleration in unsecured personal and credit card lending," CUNA Mutual reported
The dollar volume of credit card purchases is growing at a faster clip as well, according to Fed data. Total spending on credit cards increased 6.3% last year from the year before, to $3.27 trillion, while the volume of debit card payments rose slightly less at 5.3%, to $2.7 trillion.
The accelerated growth in credit card use comes at a time when late payment rates in the industry are rising. According to third-quarter data from National Credit Union Administration, the credit card delinquency rate at federally insured CUs stood at 123 basis points, up from 105 basis points in the third quarter of 2016.
Brian Riley, director of credit advisory services with Mercator Advisory Group, warned that credit losses in card portfolios may continue to rise.
“A really logical eye has to be on the collection side,” he said. “If there’s a shift in the economy, if for example, interest rates keep going up, it will start reflecting on household budgets.”
To be sure, much of the growth in credit card use is among consumers who pay off their bill in full each month. In the first quarter of 2017, 28.5% of U.S. credit-card holders did not roll over balances, according to the American Bankers Association. That figure was just 19.5% in the third quarter of 2008.
Many consumers are being lured to credit cards by
The forecast for 2018
Riley expects to see U.S. credit card transactions hit another peak next year, even though many banks may tighten their card lending standards, and even as
He noted that consumers tend to have more credit cards per household than they do debit cards, citing Federal Reserve Bank of New York data showing that households averaged four credit cards compared with 1.5 debit cards.
The credit union outlook may not be so rosy. CUNA Mutual's Trends Report predicts a “slight downward pull” on overall loan growth at credit unions next year as the result of anticipated increases to the Fed Funds interest rate that could in turn raise credit card, auto and mortgage loan interest rates.
Overall, CUNA Mutual predicts CUs will see loan growth slow to 9.5 percent in 2018 from 10.5 percent in 2017, though still well above the long-term average of 7.8 percent.
In the report released Thursday, the Fed found that total U.S. card payments increased 7.4% to 111.1 billion between 2015 and 2016.
Chip-and-PIN use rose dramatically. The Fed found that 19.1% of all in-person card transactions were made with a chip-enabled card, compared with just 2% in 2015. That is likely the result of issuers replacing old credit cards with new chip-enabled cards, as well as retailers upgrading their point-of-sale systems to accommodate the newer technology.
The Fed also found that remote credit card payments — those involving either online shopping or online bill pay — rose 16.6% from 2015 to 2016. Meanwhile, in-person payments increased by just 7.9%, reflecting the ongoing shift toward online shopping.
