Monday, February 19, 2007
Category:
Consolidation
Recent news from APACS reported that there were a record number of transactions on plastic cards in December. There are said to have been 250 transactions per second throughout December with spending on plastic reaching £31 billion. With debit card spending rising significantly, this did in fact make up the majority of plastic spending over the festive month.
Credit card spending was reported to have gone down slightly and was £11.4 billion in December 2006 compared to £11.5 billion in December 2005. The volume of card transactions also decreased from 205 million transactions in December 2006 to 197 million transactions in December 2005.
Sandra Quinn, director of communications at APACS, said: ‘We spent record amounts this Christmas and record amounts on our cards. The trend that we have seen over recent years of cards replacing cash and cheques on the high street continued this Christmas. Spending on debit cards in particular has dramatically increased and now stands at almost double the level of spending on credit cards. Our figures show that cardholders are becoming more responsible in the way that they borrow and we are clearly focusing on repayments, with the majority of spending being done by debit rather than credit cards.’
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Homeowners who used credit cards over the festive season, could consider paying these off with a debt consolidation loan. Debt consolidation loans can often be taken in the form of a secured loan which is secured on homes. A debt consolidation loan is one of many options to pay off credit cards. With any debt consolidation loan it is advisable that credit cards are paid off immediately and shut down to prevent further spending. Debt consolidation loans can be repaid over a term of 5 to 25 years; it is however important to remember that repaying borrowing over a longer term may increase overall interest charges.
