Quezi

Pile or stack of credit cards (photo by Andres Rueda CC-BY)

Credit cardholders

According to the U.S. Census Bureau,  there were 173 million credit cardholders  in the United States in 2006 and that number is projected to grow to 181 million in 2010.(1)

Number of cards

There were 1,488,000,000 credit cards in use 2006 and that number is projected to grow to 1,618,000,000 in 2010.

Number of cards         2006      2010 projected (mil)
Total                         1.488                          1.618
Bank                            561                            698
Store                            574                            569
Oil company                   77                              76
Other                            276                            275

Credit card purchase volume:  $1,950 (bil. dol.) in 2006 and projected to grow to $2,747 (bil. dol.) in 2010

Creditcard.com offers the following ranking:

Most general purpose credit cards in circulation in 2008 (2)
1. Chase – 119.4 million
2. Citi – 92 million
3. Bank of America – 80.2 million
4. Discover – 48 million
5. American Express – 46.5 million
6. Capital One – 46.3 million
7. HSBC – 38.8 million
8. GE Money – 27.2 million
9. Target – 23.4 million
10. Wells Fargo – 17.3 million

A stack of the 1.5 billion credit cards in use in the U.S. would reach more than 70 miles into space and be almost as tall as 13 Mount Everests.

Debit cardholders

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that there were 176 million debit cardholders in the United States in 2006 and that number is projected to grow to 185 million in 2010. (3)

Number of cards

There were 354 million debit cards in use 2006 and that number is projected to grow to 484 million in 2010.

Number of cards                    2006               2010 projected (millions)
Total                                      354               484
Bank                                      313               440
EFT systems                          271               281
Other                                       11                13

Debit card purchase volume: $1,025 (bil. dol.) in 2006 and projected to grow to $1,643 (bil. dol.) in 2010

For more information about the number of people that have VISA, MasterCard, American Express and Discover Cards in the U.S.

Find out who makes credit cards here .

(1) Census.gov
(2) CreditCards.com
(3) Census.gov