Credit Cards
- 13.71% (all fixed)
- 14.56% (all variable)
Credit card rates remained unchanged this week, according to Bankrate's latest survey of interest rates. The average annual percentage rate, or APR, for variable-rate credit cards stayed steady at 14.56 percent for the fourth straight week. The fixed rate was 13.71 percent, where it hasn't budged since late October.
The Federal Reserve said Monday that consumers' revolving debt, or credit card balances, rose to $798.3 billion from $792.7 billion. That's an annual rate increase of 8.5 percent, a huge jump from the previous two months' gains. On Tuesday, First Data Corp. released a report showing that credit card transactions rose by 6.1 percent in December 2011 from the same month in 2010, while the total amount put on credit cards grew by 6.8 percent.