A credit card can be your best friend when you need to buy a shiny new object that you really can’t afford, or your worst enemy when you’ve surpassed your credit limit and your bank is trying to rip you off as punishment. 

 

Love them or hate them, credit cards have become a permanent fixture on the financial landscape of most developed countries. Yet we often take them for granted and rarely consider how we feel about them and why.
 

This article looks at countries from both the developed and developing world, and the differences in how credit cards are used and viewed. We discover why Americans love their flexible friends, why the Japanese are really not interested in paying with plastic, and why India has witnessed such a backlash against the spread of credit.

 

United States of America

The USA is the credit card’s ancestral home. It was here that the first merchant credit scheme was used in the 1920s and where the concept of different merchants using the same card was founded by the managers of Diners Club, in 1950. 

 

 The USA is the most credit-card-intensive country in the world, with an average of 5 cards per person. US consumers use credit cards to pay for one quarter of all their retail purchases.

 

The disjointed nature of the US banking system has helped promote credit cards there. Historically, Americans found it easier to use credit rather than direct banking facilities when travelling interstate. The use of credit cards has now become completely entrenched in the US’s ultra consumerist society.