New study shows credit card usage by geographic location

A new study from Experian, one of the nation's foremost credit report providers, has shown that the number of credit cards in your wallet could have a lot to do with the city you choose to call home. Many geographic differences in the amounts of credit cards used, as well as usage patterns, turned up in the study.

Since the start of the recession, Americans have been using their credit cards less, and many have been paying off their balances more frequently. In addition, new credit card accounts have declined by 26 percent since the beginning of the credit crunch, although this is due in part to less credit being available to consumers.

Cardholders are also getting rid of cards they are able to pay off, and this is reflected by city-wide averages of the number of cards used. The largest twenty metropolises in the United States were sampled in this study, and found that the average American consumer had about three credit cards open. There were, however, places where this average was lower; residents of Phoenix tended to have the fewest credit cards, with an average of 2.78 open cards per cardholder.

East Coast residents tended to have more active credit cards, however. The metropolis with the most credit cards per consumer was New York City, with Pittsburgh, Boston, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis following close behind; all of these cities had more than three open cards per customer.

How many active credit cards residents had didn't necessarily determine how much they were spending each month on their cards.

In terms of the city with the greatest monthly balance, this dubious honor falls to Atlanta, with $6,700 owed, on average, each month. Columbus, Ohio, Seattle, and Minneapolis followed Atlanta closely in terms of these amounts. San Francisco, however, had the lowest average balance of only $5,300 per month.

-Seth Berger