A year after the credit card reform law was enacted, Elizabeth Warren, the administration's official in charge with setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said the industry has improved its practices and warned against over regulation of the card market.

U.S. credit card delinquencies fell about 32% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, according to TransUnion LLC.

The recession has caused consumers to change how they mentally account for money, including how they use credit cards, Susan Menke, vice president and behavioral economist at Mintel Comperemedia, noted during a recent Web seminar on consumer spending trends.

Most consumers in the United Kingdom have not changed their payment habits, but some say they will rely less on credit cards even if the economy improves, suggest recent survey data from New York-based Auriemma Consulting Group.

Credit card lending is likely to remain sluggish in the near term, according to one analyst, but a continued decline in card chargeoffs indicates "the bleeding has stopped" from loans that went into default during the recession.

Citing increased consumer spending, American Express Co. is reporting fourth quarter net income of $1.1 billion, up 53.6% from $716 million during the same period in 2009. Total revenue net of interest expense rose 12.3%, to $7.3 billion from $6.5 billion, the company announced Monday.

First Data Corp. will handle credit card processing for Kohl’s Corp.’s private-label credit cards in a multiyear agreement the two companies announced last week.

Wells Fargo & Co.’s credit card portfolio shrank somewhat in 2010 as charge-offs declined sharply, the San Francisco-based company said Jan. 19 when announcing fourth-quarter earnings.

Several of the biggest credit card issuers in December posted their lowest rates for chargeoffs than in any other month of 2010, meaning fewer accounts are slipping into default.

The universe of bonds backed by credit card loans shrank by about a fifth last year as an era of off-balance-sheet accounting ended and the industry re-engineered its funding base.

Target Corp. is seeking a buyer for its $6.7 billion credit card receivables portfolio, but it plans to retain operational control of its card program because of its “deep integration” with the company’s broader retail operations, the company announced last week.

Driven by a lower provision for credit losses, partially offset by lower net revenue, the Card Services unit at JPMorgan Chase & Co. generated fourth-quarter net income of $1.3 billion; it reported a $306 million loss during the same quarter ended Dec. 31 last year, Chase reported Friday.

U.S. consumer credit card portfolio sales were weak in 2010 as low demand drove the total number of deals down to merely a dozen, according to a report credit card consulting firm R.K. Hammer released this week.

Average U.S. consumer bankcard and private-label credit card charge-offs fell again in November, and that trend may continue into this year, according to new data Fitch Ratings Inc. released last week.

Credit card account originations are on the rise again as account-delinquency rates continue to fall and consumers continue to show discipline in their borrowing, a report Equifax Inc. released last week suggests.

A startup called Maxamum Inc. is trying to break down the credit system’s long-standing Catch 22–consumers generally cannot establish a credit history without having a credit card, but they typically cannot get a credit card without a credit history.

As credit card portfolio health continues to improve and consumer spending gradually picks up, card issuers are poised to see the first increase in overall credit card receivables next year, Moody’s Investors Service predicts in a report released last week.

U.S. consumers’ average credit card debt fell by 7.4% through the first 11 months of the year, while the average November credit score dropped a point from October’s score, according to data Credit Karma released this week.

Citibank reported Wednesday that its charge-off rate on credit cards fell to 9.4% of balances from 10.3% in October, the largest drop among the top six U.S. credit card issuers for November.

A woman saying she was harassed by Capital One for a disputed $4,000 credit card debt has filed suit after the bank demanded more than $286 million dollars.