Canadians borrowed more money last year than the year before, with total consumer debt in the last quarter of 2022 rising to $2.37 trillion, a 6.2 percent increase from the same period in 2021, according to a new report by Equifax Canada.
Consumers, especially those under 35 years old, increasingly used and relied on credit cards, with total consumer credit card balance in the fourth quarter up 15.3 percent year-over-year. Total consumer credit debt went higher than $100 billion for the first time, according to a Market Pulse report prepared by the credit monitoring agency and announced in a March 9 news release.
Over 1.4 million new credit cards were issued in the last three months of 2022, and over 300,000 more customers were using a credit card and carrying a balance as of December 2022 compared with the year before, the findings indicated….