Consumer Reactions to Current and Upcoming Credit Card Practices

With the introduction of UDAP and changes to Regulation Z, issuers will be facing many challenges, including the loss or decrease of several income streams. Given the likelihood that these regulation changes will require issuers to reexamine some of their pricing and services, we were interested in finding out how consumers would react to some hypothetical changes to their credit card accounts.

In this study, we examine what credit card changes consumers have already experienced, their reaction to and satisfaction with the reasons given for changes related to their interest rate and/or credit line, how their credit card usage was affected due to these changes, and the impact on consumers’ future card behavior if credit card issuers introduced fees for different services, such as customer service, inactive accounts, and identity theft protection/enhanced security. Data included in this report were gathered using a web survey administered to 503 credit card users in the U.S. during June 2009.