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I'm in the credit business and debit cards are now right around 50% of all transactions. Corporate and business cards are another 25%-30% and the rest is consumer credit cards. In the US the merchant doesn't know what type of card it is and most of the processors are hiding the type on the merchant statements as rewards cards now.
About 80% of online sales are made from the upper level card holders who have higher credit scores and don't carry large balances on their cards.
One of the industry reports I've heard about is online credit card usage is expected to drop about 10%-20% over the next year with debit picking up much of the slack but how much is unknown. Visa is expecting Banks to issue 15% more debit cards in 2009 as checks are phased out and Mastercard is issuing 7%-8% more debit cards. Check rewards cards are a huge money maker for the issuers and they will push these even harder in the next few years. The big question they can't answer is how much will debit cards replace credit cards and will the overall number of transactions go up as much as they are hoping?
The are still predicting an increase in debit/credit transactions over the next 5 years but not as much volume being processed because of the lower limits.
The Treasury has also announced a $200 Billion purchase of credit card debt from the Banks.
Another interesting fact is that credit union issued cards are no where near the default rates that the Banks are seeing because they don't give cards to credit derogs. I've even read that credit unions will pick up much of the credit card slack from the Banks.
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