Retail cards hit a record high average interest rate of 30.5% last year, and rates have stayed close to those levels this year.

Last year, banks quickly raised interest rates to record levels and added new monthly fees on credit cards when a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule threatened a key revenue source for the industry.

Now, they’re far more reluctant to reverse those steps, even after bank trade groups succeeded in killing the CFPB rule in federal court last month.

Synchrony and Bread Financial, two of the biggest players in the business of issuing branded credit cards for the likes of Amazon , Lowe’s and Wayfair

, are keeping the higher rates in place, executives said in recent conference calls.

“We feel pretty comfortable that the rule has been vacated,” Synchrony CEO Brian Doubles said on April 22. “With that said, we don’t currently have plans to roll anything back in terms of the changes that we made.”

  • Joelk111@lemmy.world
    41·
    16 hours ago

    I don’t even know what the rates on my cards are. I just pay them off. I also don’t bother with cards with monthly fees, unless the Costco card counts.

    The whole system is stupid though, a tax on the financially illiterate and poor. I wish I could just use debit and cash, but that’s just throwing away free money from cash back on credit cards.