| Chart of the Day |
| OCTOBER 14, 2026 |
MONEY • MARKETS |
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| Credit Card Rates Stayed at or Below 16% for 25 Years. Now They’re 21%. |
| Banks charge you 21% on your card and pay you 0.37% on your savings. That spread is the widest it’s ever been. |
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| Average credit card interest rate (APR) across all U.S. accounts, shown at year-end or most recent quarter available. |
| Source: Federal Reserve G.19, 2026 |
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| JPMorgan reported $15.3 billion in profit yesterday. One quarter. That’s more than most companies earn in a decade. Goldman, Wells Fargo, and Citi all reported the same morning. Wall Street is celebrating. But if you want to know where that money came from... pull up your last credit card statement. |
| Most people assume credit card rates follow the Fed. Rates go up when the Fed hikes, so they should come back down when the Fed cuts. Makes sense. Except that’s not what happened. The Fed cut rates three times in 2025. Card issuers passed along almost none of it. The average APR on accounts actually being charged interest went up to 22.15% in the second quarter of this year. |
| Look at the chart. For a full quarter century, from 1995 to 2020, the average credit card rate never topped 16%. A pretty narrow band. Then the Fed started its hiking cycle in 2022... and the rate jumped past 21%. And it just stayed there. That right column isn’t a blip. It’s the new normal. |
| Now here’s the part that really gets me. Your bank charges you 21% on your credit card balance. Your bank pays you 0.37% on your savings account. That’s a 21-point spread. Americans are carrying $1.26 trillion in credit card debt right now. At 21%, that’s roughly $265 billion a year in interest payments flowing from your pocket to their income statement. JPMorgan’s own filings cite higher card balances and yield as one of several drivers of their consumer banking revenue growth this quarter. |
| You are not the customer. You are the revenue line. |
