Amid all the economic doom and gloom with rising inflation and never-ending PR pitches relating to the cost-of-living crisis, thank goodness for some positive card metrics stats. Take Citi’s latest card numbers for example. Its credit card delinquency rate of just 0.79% is actually down from 0.90% a year ago. At Bank of America, its corresponding delinquency rate of 0.84% is down from 0.97% a year ago. The Bank of America net charge-off rate of 1.23% is down from 1.78% a year ago. At Citi, the charge-off rate of 1.23% is a marked improvement from 1.82% a year ago.

Moreover, in the US, consumer spend via credit cards continues to rise but at a modest rate that ought not to alarm any regulator. So much for all of those ludicrous, hysterical PR pitches over the past two or years forecasting the decline of the credit card due to millennials ditching the credit card in favour of buy-now-pay-later.

Go deeper with GlobalData

Premium Insights

The gold standard of business intelligence.

Find out more

Related Company Profiles

View all

In the UK, the latest credit card stats out this week show that total credit card transactions in April are up by 23.7% year-on-year. Total spend rises by 28.3% year-on-year with outstanding credit card balances up by 9.5% y-o-y. Not much evidence there of BNPL supplanting the humble credit card.

Australia: strong post-pandemic rebound in searches for credit cards

In Australia, there is strong evidence that credit cards are back in vogue with consumers. I am obliged to the Australian comparison website Finty for sharing their research highlighting how Australian consumer search for credit cards has recovered significantly in 2022.

For example, travel-related keywords experienced the strongest growth, up 53% on average from 2021 to 2022. At the same time, some 81% of keywords in the study experienced growth from 2021 to 2022. Notably, 75% of keywords related to activating a new credit card were up from 2021 to 2022. As for the winners, search volume for credit cards from the Big Four banks is up 18% on average from 2021 to 2022 with ANZ +24%, CBA +48%, NAB +37% and Westpac -31%.

Meantime, to the surprise of few observers, Zip is however exiting Singapore and pulling the plug on business lending due and plans to prune its planned expansion of its product line-up. It seems prudent to attempt to target break-even of its core product before it goes off at a tangent by launching cryptocurrency and investment offerings.

How well do you really know your competitors?

Access the most comprehensive Company Profiles on the market, powered by GlobalData. Save hours of research. Gain competitive edge.

Company Profile – free sample

Thank you!

Your download email will arrive shortly

Not ready to buy yet? Download a free sample

We are confident about the unique quality of our Company Profiles. However, we want you to make the most beneficial decision for your business, so we offer a free sample that you can download by submitting the below form

By GlobalData
Visit our Privacy Policy for more information about our services, how we may use, process and share your personal data, including information of your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications. Our services are intended for corporate subscribers and you warrant that the email address submitted is your corporate email address.

Meantime, Klarna seems to be committed to investing heavily to target the US market, despite the collapse in its valuation. One is tempted to suggest that that can only result in yet another funding round being necessitated before too long.