Numbers Part 16: Cards, Cards, Cards

Just stumbled across a web page on CreditCards.com that's fantastic.  Full of stats and numbers. 

Here's a sample of the most interesting:

• There were 984 million bank-issued Visa and
  MasterCard credit card and debit card accounts in the U.S in 2006.
  (Sources: Visa USA, MasterCard International)

• The top 10
  credit card issuers controlled approximately 88 percent of the credit
  card market at the end of 2006, based on credit card receivables
  outstanding. (Source: FDIC)

• U.S. Visa cardholders alone
  conduct more than $1 trillion in annual volume. (Source: Visa USA
  internal statistics, 4th quarter 2006)

• Consumers carry
  more than 1 billion Visa cards worldwide. More than 450 million of
  those cards are in the United States. (Source: Visa USA internal
  statistics, 4th quarter 2006)

• There were 159 million credit cardholders in the USA in 2000, 173 million in 2006, and that a projected 181 million by 2010 (Source: Census Bureau)

• 78% of American households -- about 91.1 million -- had one or more credit cards at the end of 2008 (Source: Nilson Report, April 2009)

• In the fourth quarter of 2008, consumers had an average of 5.4 cards (Source: Experian, March 2009)

• In 2006, there were nearly 1.5 billion credit cards in use in the USA – if you stacked all of those credit cards on top of each other they would reach more than 70 miles into space and be almost as tall as 13 Mount Everests (Source: NY Times, February 2009)

• The top 10 U.S. credit card issuers hold an 87.55% market share, up from 84.7% in 2007 (Source: Nilson Report, April 2009)

• At the end of 2008, Americans' credit card debt reached $972.73 billion, up 1.12% from 2007 (Source: Nilson Report, April 2009)

• The average outstanding credit card debt was $10,679 at the end of 2008. One year earlier, that average was $10,637 (Source: Nilson Report, April 2009)

• As of March 2009, America’s revolving consumer debt was about $950 billion and, in Q4 2008, 13.9% of consumer disposable income went to service this debt (Source: U.S. Congress' Joint Economic Committee, May 2009)

• In 2007, 14.7% of U.S. families had debt exceeding 40% of their income (Source: U.S. Congress' Joint Economic Committee, May 2009)

• In 2008, 72% of consumers indicated they used a debit card in the past year; in 2007, that number was 65% (Source: Javelin study, March 2009)

• In 2008, JPMorgan Chase was the largest issuer of small business credit
  cards with $34.5 billion in total card volume; Bank of America is
  second with $26.31 billion and Capital One is third with $20.7 billion
  (Source: Nilson Report)

Mind you, this list was a little more bitter sweet:

Ranking of U.S. banks' reputations

1. Washington Mutual -- 64.04
2. SunTrust Banks -- 63.56
3. Wachovia -- 61.22
4. National City -- 58.83
5. Wells Fargo -- 57.38
6. US Bancorp -- 54.18
7. Bank of America -- 50.94

Rankings were part of a survey of 600 of the world's largest companies.
(Source: Reputation Institute Global Pulse survey, June 2008)

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