American Express launched the first plastic charge card which was widely accepted by whole world. After seeing skyrocketed use of credit card, numerous largest banks entered into multibillion dollar industry and started offering credit cards with minimum requirement. Top Credit card issuers are lenders and accept a certain amount of risk to earn from fees and interest charged to cardholders. With the introduction of Credit cards, you don’t need to search for an ATM or keeping cash on-hand. Card issuers give summary to track your expenses and quickly advance cash, putting you out of trouble when cash is a week away while most credit card issuers handle disputes generated from defective product and correspond with merchant for you.
Today numbers of applications are being approved by largest credit card issuers to earn substantial amount of income. Credit card issuers can’t issue them all by themselves; they need the help of payment processing networks like Visa and MasterCard. However, American Express and Discover act as both the top credit card issuers and the payment processing network for their cards. Listed below are world’s top 10 credit card issuers.
| Ranking | Credit Card Issuers | Credit Issued |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bank of America/MBNA | $194.70 billion |
| 2 | Chase | $184.09 billion |
| 3 | Citi | $148.90 billion |
| 4 | American Express | $105.00 billion |
| 5 | Capital One | $68.78 billion |
| 6 | HSBC | $58.50 billion |
| 7 | Discover | $49.60 billion |
| 8 | Wells Fargo | $36.40 billion |
| 9 | Barclays | $32.60 billion |
| 10 | Lloyds TSB/HBoS | $19.29 billion |
Sources: CreditCards.com and Nilson Report, December 2009 (through year-end 2009 and ranked by total worldwide outstandings)
Nilson Report, February 2010
Federal Reserve’s G.19 report on consumer credit, March 2010
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