As inflation has reared its head, credit card usage continues to surge higher. While all age cohorts have been affected, those in their 20s and 30s have been hit hardest. 21-30 year-olds saw payments increase by 44 percent from May, 2021 to May, 2023. During the same time period, total payments to credit cards grew 37 percent for 31-40 year-olds. 41-50 year-olds and 51-60 years-olds both saw payments increase by 17.5 percent. 61-70 year-olds paid 23.2 percent more, while 71-80 year-olds paid 14.2 percent more, the smallest increase. As the daily cost of living is getting more expensive, this chart explicitly shows FIs the impact that inflation is having on the financial lives of account holders.
While not shown in this chart, Alkami data is also showing that younger cohorts are more likely to be extending themselves further with other sources of credit, such as buy now pay later
Be cognizant of account holders who are making much higher credit card payments than their average, and check for corresponding decreases in their deposit accounts. If there is a trend between those two, this could indicate the financial insecurity of the individuals and could present an opportunity to gain revenue opportunities by offering them their own in-house credit card or loan products.
Source: 2023 Alkami Telemetry Data is sourced from a panel of more than 20 financial institutions with a range of asset sizes from under $500M to $15B. The data panel represents 2.16 billion transactions analyzed representing the financial behaviors of 1.1 million account holders across 8 different age brackets.