18 Revealing Credit Card Ownership Statistics

Credit cards have come a long way from their start in the late 19th century, when stores and hotels began offering metal and celluloid charge cards designed to stamp account numbers on sales slips.

It was a decidedly analog beginning for an industry currently transitioning from chip and PIN cards, where a metallic chip holds payment data on a plastic card, to virtual cards and global digital payment systems.

Nowadays, Americans are so accustomed to using physical and virtual credit and debit cards online and at the point of purchase that many don’t know any other way. Here are 18 revealing credit card ownership statistics that show just how Americans use their cards.

Let’s start with the basics. It should come as no surprise that credit card ownership rates steadily increase year after year. But the numbers may astonish you: In 2024, 81% of American adults owned at least one credit card, down slightly from a high of 84% in 2021.¹

That percentage amounted to an estimated 617 million cards in 2024. By 2026, that number is expected to increase to 668 million.²

Household prosperity significantly skews credit card ownership rates, although the differences grow less stark as income increases. Families earning less than $25,000 a year hold credit cards at a rate of 46%. The number jumps to 74% for families earning up to $50,000 and 89% for those earning up to $100,000.

There’s another increase to 97% for households bringing in more than $100,000. But the takeaway is that if you’re not struggling to meet basic needs, you probably own at least one credit card.¹

One prominent aspect of the American Dream is that wealth increases with age, and credit card ownership bears that out: The older you are, the more likely you are to own at least one credit card. 

With a card ownership percentage of just 63%, consumers emerging into adulthood are significantly less likely to carry cards than those approaching retirement age and beyond.¹

Age	Ownership Rate
18-29	63%
30-44	79%
45-59	86%
60+	92%

Lots of factors play into this. Many young people struggle to build a sufficient credit score to qualify for an affordable interest rate. Card issuers and financial technology firms have introduced various credit-building tools to remedy that.

With people establishing permanent households and marrying later, there’s less need for the financial flexibility credit cards offer. And with home prices ballooning, there’s a reduced imperative to build permanent households.

However, considerable nuances around card use among young people warrant further exploration. For example, among the 63% of Gen Z members who own a card, 44% of those carry a revolving balance. Among the entire population of Gen Z members, nearly one-third (28%) use a credit card enough to carry a balance.

The average credit score of a subset of those users (those aged from 18 to 25) is 674, six points lower than the average for millennials aged 26 to 41, indicating broad familiarity and acceptance of credit card use early in the consumer trajectory and perhaps some struggle in making ends meet.¹

Moreover, the average credit limit for first-time card owners is low — between $500 and $1,000 on average.³ That may explain why half of Gen Z consumers (50%) plan to apply for new credit or refinance existing accounts within the next year.⁴

Members of the Generation Z cohort aged 18 to 29 own only two credit cards on average, while older Americans may own four or more, reinforcing our age-related observations. Interestingly, those numbers obscure differences between baby boomers and the Silent Generation that some may regard as counterintuitive.

Baby boomers own 4.3 cards on average, while members of the Silent Generation, the cohort aged 78 and above, own only 3.5.

Generation	Average Number of Credit Cards
Generation Z (18-26)	2
Millennials (27-42)	3.5
Generation X (43-58)	4.3
Baby boomers (59-77)	4.3
Silent Generation (78+)	3.5

Generation Xers are tied with the baby boomers at 4.3 cards owned on average, which makes the Silent Generation an outlier in the trend toward increased ownership with age. 

Members of the Silent Generation, most of whom were born around World War II, came of age before cards were ubiquitous. People may also have less need for multiple cards as they age and consume less.⁵

Of course, card ownership isn’t the only path to card use; authorized card users can gain experience under someone else’s watchful eye. In fact, one survey reports that 22% of U.S. parents set up their children as authorized users on their credit card accounts.⁶

That tells us something good about the financial services industry: Many young cardholders learn to use credit while living at home. With stories of increasing credit utilization, card debt, and debt delinquency common in the media, at least some young adults learn best card practices from more experienced users before going out on their own.

Schools, credit unions, and community banks increasingly take some of the burden of providing financial education. Good things happen when parents and institutions build sound community money practices as part of the same team.

Income is a factor here: Young people in families with higher annual incomes tend to gain earlier credit access, while those earning less tend to be older when they obtain their first card.⁶

The differences are stark. While only 8% of minor children in families earning less than $35,000 a year were authorized users on their parents’ accounts, 37% in families earning $100,000 or more were, with families in the middle-class range predictably falling somewhere in between.⁶

It’s evidence of a maxim in financial services that the affluent enjoy greater financial flexibility through credit access than those with fewer resources. If you think it ought to work the other way around, remember that business fundamentals lead financial firms to extend the most credit to consumers with the best chance of paying it back.

Gender is one credit card ownership demographic metric where racial, ethnic, and income differences don’t seem to have much effect. In contrast to stark differences expressed elsewhere, there are almost no credit card ownership distinctions based on sex, with men owning 3.38 and women 3.22 credit cards on average among all generational cohorts.⁷

It’s a testament to the leveling influences of American consumer society that gender differences in card ownership are largely a thing of the past. After all, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which prohibited discrimination against credit applicants based on gender, became law only in 1974. That allowed women to apply for credit cards in their own names.

Race is another matter, with card ownership rates according to broad racial and ethnic categories following common socioeconomic patterns. Asian and white consumers top the list at 89% and 86%, respectively, and Hispanic and Black consumers trail at 72% and 69%.¹

That meshes with current data from the Federal Reserve showing white families holding about $1.4 million in average wealth, Black families holding $311,000, and Hispanic families holding $251,000.⁸

We’ve seen how age, race, ethnicity, and household wealth play into card ownership. But one of the most important factors is your credit score, which measures the creditworthiness of a prospective borrower based on past behavior.

Using the popular FICO credit scoring model as a benchmark, recent data shows U.S. consumers with exceptional FICO scores (defined as scores between 800 and the model’s ceiling of 850) holding 4.8 cards, in contrast to the average among all consumers of 3.9.

However, average credit card balances among consumers with exceptional credit scores were much lower, at $3,873 compared to $6,501 among all cardholders. Likewise, the average utilization rate (the ratio between credit limit and balance) among those with exceptional scores was only 7% compared to 29% for cardholders as a whole.⁹

As banks and fintechs devise more inclusive methodologies for assessing creditworthiness, they gain the ability to extend credit to more consumers. That hasn’t blunted the common sense among card issuers favoring consumers with a proven ability to repay.

State-based card ownership trends follow the same prosperity patterns observed in socioeconomic data, with states generally regarded as more prosperous leading the list and states with more economically struggling individuals listed further behind.

State	Average Number of Credit Cards
New Jersey	3.49
New York	3.34
Rhode Island	3.26
Hawaii	3.25
California	3.23
Connecticut	3.23
Massachusetts	3.21
Florida	3.19
Nevada	3.18
Maryland	3.16

New Jersey residents own the highest average number of cards at 3.49, with New York, Rhode Island, Hawaii, and California close behind. At the bottom is Mississippi, where residents own only 2.57 cards on average. States close to Mississippi at the bottom of the card ownership list include Iowa, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Arkansas.¹⁰

By now, readers should understand that consumers are increasingly turning to credit cards to make all types of purchases, routine and non-routine. The card-ownership landscape hasn’t stopped changing, but we can view some trends as more certain than others.

Cash use is one example. Although consumers continue to experiment with different forms of credit and debit and different ways to pay, most seem to agree that plastic is better than paper.

Recent Fed data shows cash use continuing to decline, amounting to only 14% of transactions in 2024, down from 20% in 2020. Only 35% report using a check in the past month. Credit card (35%) and debit card (30%) transactions constitute more than two-thirds of the total.¹¹

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of these trends is the continuing interest in debit when credit cards carry sophisticated consumer protections and the prospect of earning rewards.

Debit cards and Buy Now, Pay Later installment plans are less flexible than credit cards because of hard spending limits. Some debit cards now offer rewards, and the rise of convenient apps and digital payment systems for monitoring account balances makes maintaining a positive balance easy.

That said, many consumers use credit cards to earn extra cash. Americans are more likely to own a cash back card than any other type, with 68% reporting they hold a card that gives something back.

Travel rewards cards are the next most common type, with a 32% ownership rate. Americans also report owning cards that pay for gas and groceries and balance transfers to lower-interest environments.

Type of Card	Ownership Rate
Cash back	68%
Travel rewards	32%
Gas and groceries	27%
Balance transfer	27%
0% APR	25%
Secured	22%
Signup bonus	20%
Store or brand-specific	15%
Student	11%

A significant percentage report owning zero-interest cards. And another percentage reports holding secured cards, which function as credit-score builders.¹²

Consumers continue to explore ways to earn money through credit use. Although cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum remain outside the financial mainstream as mediums of exchange, a growing minority of Americans consider crypto a valid investment class.

However, the only evidence we have regarding actual real-world “crypto card” use emanates from 2021, when a survey found that 5% of Americans, approximately 13 million people, owned a credit card that allowed them to earn cryptocurrency rewards or redeem reward points on cryptocurrency.¹³

Crypto cards have declined since then due to market volatility, the collapse of the FTX exchange, and increased regulatory scrutiny. But Americans continue to experiment with crypto.

For example, the popular exchange Crypto.com, which claims more than 140 million registered users, announced plans in 2025 to offer a crypto card that bases its rewards on the market exchange rate of its underlying currency.¹⁴

Meanwhile, one highly regarded source estimates the global crypto credit card market to grow from $1.2 billion in 2023 to $7.8 billion in 2032, indicating the market for crypto cards will also continue to grow.¹⁵

Another trend in card ownership is toward fewer card brands. Although store brands dominated the early stages of charge card history, most American consumers today select cards from only four major brands: Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express.

Visa is the largest U.S. card brand and network, claiming 1.3 billion cards in circulation globally (37% of the total). Mastercard follows with 1.1 billion cards in circulation (32%). Trailing significantly are American Express with 141 million cards (4%) and Discover, with 71.5 million cards (2%).¹⁶

In other words, Visa and Mastercard are increasingly synonymous with the generic idea of a credit card, according to the purchasing preferences of most Americans. Just as most Americans prefer banking with one or more of the too-big-to-fail enterprise-level institutions, they prefer cards they can count on wherever they purchase.

JPMorgan Chase is the clear leader among card issuers, accounting for $1.2 trillion (21%) of total consumer, small business, purchasing, corporate, and fleet credit card volume in the U.S.

With its distinctive platform architecture, American Express is simultaneously a network and an issuer, and its total purchase volume places second overall at $1.1 trillion (19%).

Back on the more widespread networks of Visa and Mastercard, Citi and CapitalOne follow at $594 billion (10%) and $575 billion (10%), respectively. Bank of America found out the top five issuers at $494 billion (8%).¹⁶

Looking at card ownership globally, the U.S. is ninth among world leaders, with 66.7% of consumers aged 15 and above owning a card. But America is too economically and socially diverse to match the heights of a few other nations.

One is located above the northern U.S. border, where 82.7% of Canadian consumers hold a card. And among the 17.8% of consumers in the Middle East who have a credit card, Israel stands out with an unusually high ownership rate of 79.1% — another top performer.

Other prominent card-ownership nations include Hong Kong, Japan, Switzerland, South Korea, and Norway.¹⁷

Meanwhile, it’s unlikely the U.S. will ascend to a higher ownership percentage relative to the global population because credit cards are increasingly popular worldwide, with a total global card ownership rate of 24.5%.

That means a lot more people outside the U.S. are prospective new credit card owners, potentially relegating the U.S. to an ever-lower position relative to the global economy.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of global credit card usage data is the disparity between debit and credit cards. In contrast to the relatively meager global percentage for credit card owners, more than half (52.8%) of global consumers hold a debit card.

Many nations have room for improvement when it comes to global credit card ownership. Nearest to the average is Poland, with a credit card ownership rate of 24.4%. Nations at 10% or below include South Africa, the Philippines, Malaysia, Kenya, Vietnam, India, Egypt, Nigeria, Indonesia, Morocco, Ghana, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.¹⁷

In the U.S. and globally, card ownership rates are a cause and an effect of social and economic patterns and trends. When politics are stable, economies grow and become more interconnected.

Because credit cards facilitate consumer exchange, they allow positive trends to build on themselves and become more significant. Monitoring the card ownership landscape reveals and reflects these trends.

¹ https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2024-report-economic-well-being-us-households-202505.pdf
² https://capitaloneshopping.com/research/credit-card-ownership-statistics
³ https://www.bankrate.com/credit-cards/news/first-time-credit-card-statistics
⁴ https://newsroom.transunion.com/q2-2023-ciir/
⁵ https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/average-number-of-credit-cards-a-person-has
⁶ https://www.lendingtree.com/credit-cards/study/kids-and-credit-cards-survey
⁷ https://upgradedpoints.com/credit-cards/credit-card-ownership-statistics
⁸ https://www.stlouisfed.org/community-development/publications/the-state-of-us-household-wealth
⁹ https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/how-many-americans-have-800-credit-score
¹⁰ https://www.bankrate.com/credit-cards/news/credit-card-ownership-usage-statistics
¹¹ https://www.atlantafed.org/banking-and-payments/consumer-payments/survey-and-diary-of-consumer-payment-choice
¹² https://www.fool.com/money/research/how-gen-z-millennials-gen-x-baby-boomers-use-credit-cards
¹³ https://www.finder.com/crypto-credit-card-statistics
¹⁴ https://crypto.com/en/company-news/creditcardus
¹⁵ https://www.thebrainyinsights.com/report/crypto-credit-card-market-14392
¹⁶ https://www.fool.com/money/research/credit-debit-card-market-share-network-issuer
¹⁷ https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2025-global-overview-report