Credit Cards in the America's

More than half of the major Credit Card companies in the world are North American companies (specifically the United States). Visa and Mastercard are the worldwide industry leaders. Though other notable players such as AMEX, Discover, Diners Club, etc. are also within the market on more of a niche product basis.?Below, we will break down the current state of the most popular credit cards in North America and a little bit about South America too.

Industry Leaders

Within the USA especially,?Visa is far ahead of Mastercard as of 2021 with Visa having issued 336M cards, while Mastercard has issued 231M cards.

Similar data can be found throughout South America and the Caribbean, though in Canada their domestic solution Interac is by far the most common as you can see by the chart here. (The chart is slightly old, but the data hasn't changed much since).

Battle of the smaller firms in the United States

As we already discussed, Visa and Mastercard are constantly battling it out with each other. But other smaller companies are also battling for the leftover market share.

“In 2021, American Express held 11.3% of the market in the United States.” Which sounds quite low, but between the three smaller firms, there is always a merely a few percentage points between each network. AMEX, and Discover are fighting for a very small proportion of the market share and are catering to different populations to compete. AMEX is known for its rewards points, travel points, and cash-back options through co-branding, often bringing in a richer audience. While Discover is known for its reduced fee’s and discounts bringing in a more frugal audience. These companies will likely continue the same battle unless new players enter.

Who has the cards

Canada has the highest population of credit card holders. “82.58% of Canadians older than 15 own a credit card, according to the available data.” Though they do not have the most credit cards by volume due to their lack of population. This is the reason Interac doesn't have more market share in North America overall due to the USA and Mexico outweighing them in population.

While in South America the country with the highest proportion of credit card users is Brazil. 40% of Brazilians have a credit card, which sounds like a fairly low rate, but many countries in South America often have less than a 30% rate, making it the market leader.

Wild Card

Brazil – though the most commonly used credit card is Visa according Brazil’s central bank, the most widely accepted network from merchants is actually Mastercard. This discrepancy could change either acceptance levels or card preference over time. Also, Brazil is said to be taking interest into JCB (a credit card network from Japan), while the exact reason is unknown, this could be due to the Japanese population in the nation.

Extra Point: Gender in the United States

In North and South America, credit card ownership and credit card networks are not particularly gender specific. Though oddly in the USA, credit card ownership is gender specific.

“97 million American women and 95 million American men own a minimum of one credit card. In a similar manner,?women have a higher number of credit cards on average (4.5) compared to men (3.6).” This could be due to the credit gap between men and women, Experian also revealed that women have slightly better credit than men do and are more likely to pay their debts on time. This data is likely providing women with more opportunities to receive multiple credit cards with varying rates. Which could also mean that women are more likely to have multiple issuers of cards than men.

This doesn't necessarily have to do with credit card networks; however, the changes in market share in the future could have to do with those networks catering their benefits to women in the USA as they are the dominant holder.

Did anything surprise you?

Though it is easy to see that Visa and Mastercard will stay the dominant players in the region. Smaller players may notice a change in their market share over time. For merchants, they need to consider what card networks are the most utilized in their countries of service to aid maintaining consumer trust and lower cart abandonment. At Eromnet we work with all of the major card issuing companies like Visa, Union Pay, JCB, Mastercard, AMEX, etc. so our merchants can easily accept payments without worrying which card networks customers are choosing.

Would you like to hear more? Let us know in the comments if you want to hear about more credit card information.