Credit and debit card count in U.S. 2012-2024| ��ƽ��

Total number of credit cards and debit cards in circulation in the United States from 2012 to 2024

Characteristic	Credit cards	Debit cards
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Release date

March 2026

More information

Region

United States

Survey time period

2012 to 2024

Special properties

No numbers were provided from before 2012; Figures were released in early 2024, and have a significant publication delay due to domestic data collection and reporting. The U.S. has the largest reporting delay of all countries considered.

Supplementary notes

The figures have been collected from several publications, as (the quality of) data tracking of card payments can vary significantly between countries, and to unify figures across different countries worldwide.

All figures stem from either the��or the��. Both use figures submitted by the country's central bank to either or both sources.

2022 figures and beyond - release date November 2023 and later - made significant strides in reporting quality, sometimes causing significant breaks in methodology in individual countries. ��ƽ�� sometimes still had to calculate figures, however, as card figures were split between non-remote and remote use cases, or credit cards were not always clearly defined.��

Depending on the content, additional sources were used:

Per capita, 15 years and older:��;
U.S. dollar conversion:��rates from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

Citation formats

A year before Covid-19 reached the United States, the number of credit cards was already declining. In 2019, there were over three times more credit cards in the USA than debit cards - although the latter continued to increase in 2019 whereas credit cards did not. In 2019, Visa was the biggest credit card brand across the nation with over *** million cards issued.

Credit cards in the U.S.

The credit card industry is a major business in the United States. By 2014, the number of credit cards in the country was estimated to exceed *** billion. The number of credit card accounts registered a peak in the fourth quarter of 2018, with around **** billion credit card accounts owned in the United States as of that time. In terms of credit available on credit cards, the industry reported the highest figure to date in the fourth quarter of 2017, amounting to **** trillion U.S. dollars.

Visa in the U.S.

Visa is the most popular credit card company in the U.S., both in terms of cards issued and purchase volume. Visa issued approximately *** million credit cards in 2010. The purchase volume of the Visa credit cards amounted to *** billion U.S. dollars in the same year. In comparison, there were about *** million MasterCard credit cards in circulation in the U.S. in 2010 with their purchase volume amounting to *** billion U.S. dollars in the same year.