Knowing Some Credit Card Transaction Figures

The plastic rules once again. Credit cards are definitely a must-have in our lifestyle that is high in materialism and consumerism. The Reserve Bank just announced that the value of purchases using credit cards rose by 12.2 percent in a year up to March. Balances on credit card payments only rose at 6.4 percent, meaning people are more responsible now in paying their dues. Although we do not really need to look into the figures to know just how dependent we are to our credit cards, numbers and figures have an effect to credit card policies. As consumers, we need to be guided to get the best deal from our credit card provider.

In real value, it appears that credit cards purchases by March were already 19.9 billion dollars as compared to 2.1 billion dollars the previous year. If we were to include cash advances, the increase amounts to 2.1 billion dollars or an 11.6 percent based from the same month last year, garnering a total sum of 20.9 billion dollars. The increase is a substantial amount compared with the average growth rate of the last five years, which was at 7.1 percent.

Last March, the number of transactions made was 139.4 million having an average transaction size totalling to $150.6. Moreover, repayments have grown faster than the latest average, increasing to 8,7 per from March of 2009 to March of this year. It is markedly comparable to the 7.9 percent average over the last five years.

The overall sum of credit and charge card outstanding balances increased to 47.1 billion dollars in March of 2009, which is a rise totalling to 2.8 billion dollars or 6.4 percent from the previous year. This increase is slightly more than half of the 10.7 percent average annual growth rate of outstanding balances looking at the last five years figures.

Moreover, the average credit or charge card account balance dived to 0.2 percent to $3242 in March from February’s $3250. This is a 4.6 percent increase from the pegged average of $3100 in March of last year. The rationale behind this rise in the average balance, which is considerably slower than the total sum of outstanding balance, was the rise of 1.6 percent of the number of credit and charge card accounts. This figure was the result of looking into over the year numbers up to March, or from 14.3 million to 15 million.

Looking into the total credit and charge card transactions, only a 0.7 percent increase was tallied in the value of cash advances, which was 1.04 billion dollars in March. EFTPOS transactions inclusive of purchases and cash-outs totalled to 18.939 million valued at 12.117 billion dollars in March as compared with 158 million transactions at $11 billion dollars in March of 2009, increasing at 15.4 percent in number terms or a 9.7 percent in value terms.

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