Credit cards retain popularity

Posted 2008-03-18

Credit cards remain an "extremely popular" form of borrowing despite growth rates having slowed over the past year, one leading debt charity has claimed. Chris Tapp, director of Credit Action, acknowledged that spending on credit cards has levelled off over the past 12 months - but he said the reasons for this downtick were less than reassuring. Rather than consumers experiencing a growing awareness of personal debt, Mr Tapp insisted the difficulties were primarily a consequence of financial institutions tightening their lending criteria. He added that there had been an "astronomical" rise credit card expenditure over the past few years and said the latest downswing was unlikely to offset that trend. "It is certainly the case that credit cards are an extremely popular way of borrowing and a lot of people hold multiple credit cards," Mr Tapp concluded. Recent research by MoneyExpert.com research released at the beginning of the month shows that 3.2 million of us own five or more credit cards.

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