A fledgling million dollar business fifty years ago, the credit card business has now zoomed, big time, into the trillion dollar club. For the first time, Americans charged $2 trillion on their major credit cards in one year, and amassed more than $2 trillion in revolving and installment consumer credit, excluding home mortgages. Also, for the first time, the nation’s largest credit card network, VISA, reported it topped $1 trillion in U.S. sales volume during 2003. Purchases and cash advances on general purpose payment cards, including VISA, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover, totaled $2.1 trillion in 2003, a 9.2% gain over 2002. However, the growth was down from the 11.4% increase for 2002/2001. The second quarter of last year was the most sluggish period as gross dollar volume on credit and debit cards only increased 7.3% over the prior year. The most active quarter was the third quarter when GDV topped $540 billion, a 10% gain over 3Q/02. For all of 2003, VISA processed 52.6% of the total volume; MasterCard produced 30.3%; American Express 12.5%; and, Discover 4.7%. During 2002, U.S. consumers and employees used credit and debit cards to make $1922.8 billion in transactions. In 2001, the figure was $1725.9 billion.
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|_3. General Purpose Credit and Signature Debit Card Volume |
|_. Gross Dollar Volume Year-Year Change |
|_. 1Q/03 | $477.1 billion | +9.7% |
|_. 2Q/03 | $515.9 billion | +7.3% |
|_. 3Q/03 | $540.5 billion | +10.0% |
|_. 4Q/03 | $566.9 billion | + 9.9% |
|_. TOTAL | $2100.4 billion | +9.2% |
|_3. Source: CardData (www.carddata.com) |
