Credit card rates holding pattern continues

Posted on February 26, 2012 by Max

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The average interest rate on a new credit card offer remained unchanged, according to the CreditCards.com Weekly Credit Card Rate Report.

For the fourth straight week, the average annual percentage rate (APR) stood at 14.91 percent, its lowest level since August 2011. It’s the sixth time in the first eight weeks of the year that rates have gone unchanged.

When rates have moved in 2012, they have fallen – once in January and once in early February. Dating back to late 2011, we have gone 10 straight weeks without seeing a week-to-week increase in the national average APR – the longest such stretch since CreditCards.com began tracking rates in 2007.

The last increase we saw was in mid-December, as rates jumped from 14.98 percent to a record 15.22 percent. That increase was the largest in more than a year.

The rate dip means real money for those looking to sign up for a new credit card. A cardholder who borrows $5,000 on a credit card today and consistently pays $150 per month at 14.91 percent would have to pay $1,496 in interest to pay off the debt. That’s $33 less had cardholders applied for a credit card at the beginning of the year when the national APR average was 15.14 percent. (Calculator: How long will it take to pay off your credit card balance?)

Gradually decreasing interest rates aren’t the only positive news for cardholders. Credit bureau TransUnion said the national credit card delinquency rate — the number of cardholders who are currently 90 days or more past due with a payment — fell nearly 5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, compared to the same period in 2010.

Cardholders also received more credit last year, the TransUnion report showed. The number of new credit cards in 2011 grew by more than 14 percent compared to 2010. Twenty-five percent of those new cards went to consumers with a VantageScore of less than 700 — so-called subprime borrowers. (VantageScore uses a range of 501 to 990. The more-popular FICO credit score uses a range of 300 to 850.) In 2010, that number was 21.8 percent. That marks a reversal from trends seen during the height of the recession, when wary credit card issuers focused their sights on only the least risky borrowers.

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