Dive Brief:
- Sixty percent of credit cardholders are financially unhealthy, up from 56% a year prior, according to a J.D. Power U.S. Credit Card Satisfaction study released Thursday. The study measures financial health based on consumers’ spending-savings ratio, creditworthiness, insurance and other safety net expenditures.
- On average, monthly credit card spending rose by $109 per month from a year prior, to $1,167, the study found. More than half of cardholders carried a balance, J.D. Power said.
- While credit card satisfaction stood at 613 points relative to J.D. Power’s 1,000 point satisfaction scale, airline cardholders were most satisfied at 641 in the 2026 study. Satisfaction among holders of value cards, which do not accrue rewards or have annual fees, was 573.
Dive Insight:
Consumers’ satisfaction with their credit cards has declined as they carry balances from month to month, incurring interest charges, the J.D. Power study found. Fifty-two percent of cardholders carried a balance, slightly down from 53% a year earlier. Among cardholders with a balance, about 30% had $2,500 or more in debt, according to the study.
“Issuers should recognize where customers are financially, deliver clear and tangible value to those who can benefit from premium perks and enhance product support for those under greater financial pressure,” John Cabell, J.D. Power’s managing director of payments intelligence, said in the press release. “At the same time, strong, effective fraud protection is a must before customers start looking elsewhere.”
Along with waning consumer engagement, fraud is becoming an increasing headache for credit cardholders.
As incidents of fraud have grown to 13%, credit card issuers’ proactive outreach to find fraud has declined from 42% the previous year to 38% this year, the study found.
Meanwhile, consumer confidence in the security of their financial information fell five percentage points to 37%, including among physical card and digital wallet users, according to the study.
J.D. Power’s study offers some insight into which credit cards are winning over consumers. American Express led the customer satisfaction ranking for a seventh consecutive year at 668, followed by JPMorgan Chase (635) and Bank of America (630), according to the study.
Prior to J.D. Power’s research, other reports suggested that consumers’ data security concerns are well-founded. A 2025 Nilson report projected that card fraud would total about $404 billion in losses globally over the next decade. The report predicted that U.S. consumers will be hit particularly hard by fraud in card-not-present transactions.
