America is hooked on credit cards — and it's pretty clear why (Business News)

[Anonymous]

Read it here: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-credit-cards-more-popular-than-debit-cards-2017-6

[Anonymous]

Interesting read.

Here is one thing that stood out to me:

The escalating credit card rewards war has succeeded in winning over customers. But there are some ominous signs that credit card companies may have issued credit too freely.

This just reminds me of the 2008 housing market crash just waiting to happen again but with credit cards.

[Revelate]

It's hard for many average Americans (read as definitely not those on this forum with 20+ tradelines) to get monthly credit card payments equivalent to their mortgages.  Average credit card debt (which I think was calculated as amount of aggregate debt divided by number of consumer with 1+ credit cards) is something like 5.6K IIRC from a recent posting, that's not a massive sinkhole for most people.

Also the wider market isn't really exposed to credit card defaults like the a whole crapload of people were with the mortgage backed securities that were being peddled to everyone on secondary markets. 

I don't see a bunch of doom and gloom on this count; what surprises me in the article is that cash payments have held steady at 10%, and that debit cards are still so prevalent in comparison to credit cards.