Credit cards: how do you use yours?

With 34 million Brits now in possession of a credit card, new research from Abbey Credit Cards has found that for over three million of us, credit card usage is now a daily occurrence.

The research looked at frequency of card use by gender, age and location as well as types of purchases. It found that 54 per cent of people use their credit card at least once a week or more. At the other end of the spectrum are those who use their card just once a month or less. 35 per cent of credit card holders fall into this group, and surprisingly, they tend to be younger people.

Looking at purchase type, it pointed to three interesting spending trends:

Surf n’ spend

Abbey found that the most popular use for a credit card was for online shopping. Indeed over 20 million respondents (61 per cent) said that they regularly shopped online with a credit card. The research also showed that men are more inclined towards online shopping with 69 per cent regularly doing so compared with just 52 per cent of women.

Pavement plastic

The high street was only marginally less popular for credit card usage with almost nineteen million people (55 per cent of cardholders) regularly using their card to fund non-virtual shopping trips. Big ticket items were next at 50 per cent.

Supermarket sweep

Over fifteen million people are popping the weekly supermarket shop on their credit card, many of them looking to take advantage of the resurgence in cashback deals. Indeed Abbey’s research2 reveals that cashback is the most popular credit card benefit feature, after being cited by one-in-five cardholders.

Paying for it

Encouragingly over nineteen million of us (57 per cent of credit cardholders) pay off the balance on our cards every month, 24 million of us (72 per cent) claim to ‘regularly’ pay off our card balance while only three per cent (one million cardholders) ‘rarely’ manage to pay off their balance.

Roger Lovering, Managing Director of Abbey Credit Cards, said: “There is no one way that people use their credit card and we see as many different spending patterns as there are people. Our job, as an innovative credit card provider, is to offer benefits on our Abbey credit card that are relevant to all the different types of credit card user. Currently we have a supermarket cashback offer, which has broad appeal, however in the future we hope to be able to segment our customer base and offer targeted benefits that suit them as an individual.”

Abbey’s credit card offers 5 per cent cashback on supermarket spending, as well as:

0 per cent balance transfer for 12 months, with 2.5 per cent fee (minimum £3)
0 per cent on purchases for 3 months
Low ongoing purchase rate of 15.9 per cent
Daily ATM withdrawal allowance of £300