纽约联储-信用卡银行（英）

Credit Card Banking Itamar Drechsler | Hyeyoon Jung | Weiyu Peng | Dominik Supera | Guanyu Zhou NO. 1143 MARCH 2025 Credit Card Banking Itamar Drechsler, Hyeyoon Jung, Weiyu Peng, Dominik Supera, and Guanyu Zhou Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports, no. 1143 March 2025 https://doi.org/10.59576/sr.1143 Abstract Credit card interest rates, the marginal cost of consumption for nearly half of households, currently average 23 percent, far exceeding the rates on any other major type of loan or bond. Why are these rates so high? To understand this, and the economics of credit card banking more generally, we analyze regulatory account-level data on 330 million monthly accounts, representing 90 percent of the US credit card market. Default rates are relatively high at around 5 percent, but explain only a fraction of cards’ rates. Non-interest expenses and rewards payments are more than offset by interchange and non-interest income. Operating expenses, such as marketing, are very large, and are used to generate pricing power. Deducting them, we find that credit card lending still earns a 6.8 percent return on assets (ROA), more than four times the banking sector’s ROA. Using the cross section of accounts by FICO score, we estimate that credit card rates price in a 5.3 percent default risk premium, which we show is comparable to the one in high-yield bonds. Adjusting for this, we estimate that card lending still earns a 1.17 percent to 1.44 percent “alpha” relative to the overall banking sector. JEL classification: G12, G21, G51 Key words: credit cards, banking, asset pricing, household finance _________________ Jung: Federal Reserve Bank of New York (email: hyeyoon.jung@ny.frb.org). Dreschsler, Peng, Zhou: University of Pennsylvania (emails: idrechsl@wharton.upenn.edu, weiyupen@wharton.upenn.edu, guanyuz@wharton.upenn.edu). Supera: Columbia Business School (email: ds3791@columbia.edu). The authors thank seminar participants at Wharton, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia for helpful comments. They also thank Robert Hammer for his valuable insights. This paper presents preliminary findings and is being distributed to economists and other interested readers solely to stimulate discussion and elicit comments. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the author(s). To view the authors’ disclosure statements, visit https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/staff_reports/sr1143.html. 1IntroductionCredit cards are one of the most commonly used financial products in the United States.There are around 580 million credit card accounts nationwide, with approximately 74% ofUS adults have a credit card account in their name.1 Credit cards are now the primarymethod of payment for consumers, with total purchase volume of $6 trillion in 2