Credit Card Late Payments Continue to Fall

Whether a rare occurrence or an indication that consumer finances are becoming more stable, for the fifth month in a row reports for May have shown that credit card delinquencies continue to drop. Since the beginning of the year, credit card delinquencies have slowly declined for many of the major credit card issuers as experts and issuers alike hope that this continues on throughout the year. While for many of the issuers there was a decrease in delinquencies there were a couple that did increase. Details can be found within an article entitled, "Credit Card Late Payments Drop for 5th Month in a Row".

Even as the percent of those who are late on payments continue to decline, many experts believe that this trend could easily be reversed without any fault of the credit card issuers. One of the biggest things that would reverse this trend is the uncertainty of unemployment. While these levels still remain high nationally, there is nothing showing any reason why the unemployment rate should decrease any time soon. While it is not as big of a factor as unemployment, another reason on why this decline trend could be reversed deals with artificial inflation. This is done when consumers use funds that are not available to consumers year round. A good example of this is the use of tax refunds and other forms of revenue to pay on credit card debt. While the number of consumers do this is uncertain, researchers will have a better understanding once we move further into 2010 and these revenues start to become obsolete.