Big credit card issuers have released data for delinquency and charge-offs for the month of August, lending a glimpse into the latest spending habits of Americans.
With prices soaring due to high levels of inflation—at 8.3 percent for August—some consumers have turned to credit cards in an effort to complement their increasingly limited budgets, while many are struggling to make payments.
Credit card issuing in the U.S. is rising. By the first quarter of this year, Americans held 537 million credit card accounts, up 6 percent from the previous year.
Credit card debt came down from an all-time high of $930 billion in late 2019, according to New York Fed data, but the average credit card holder in the U.S. still had $5,769 in credit card debt by the first quarter of 2022, with balances only slightly below pre-pandemic levels, according to MoneyGeek….