Cardhub’s survey of Q4 credit trends show that credit interest levels are still remarkably low, at least at the introductory level.
The company reports that
- Regular APRs rose across the board relative to Q4 2010 – Relative increases between 3.5% and 9.5% were observed among credit cards for excellent, good, and fair credit as well as secured credit cards, whereas interest rates for student and business credit cards rose less than 1% in relative terms.
- 0% introductory terms are over 27% longer than in Q4 2010 – 0% intro terms now range from 6 to 21 months, a development that most likely explains the aforementioned rise in regular APRs. It appears that issuers are willing to sacrifice interest revenue in the early stages of the customer life cycle in the hopes of attracting more new customers and recouping this revenue later on through higher regular APRs
The APRs are an indication that credit card firms continue to press high charges to burnish results
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