The average credit card APR stands at 19.67%, near its all-time record, and borrowers who actually carry a balance pay considerably more, according to Bankrate’s weekly survey and Federal Reserve data. Accounts assessed interest were charged an average of 22.15% in the second quarter of 2026, the Fed’s consumer credit release shows.
Bankrate’s average, measured as of October 14, sits just below the record 20.79% set on August 14, 2024. The prime rate is 7%, and issuers typically add 12 to 13 percentage points on top of it, according to the survey analysis.
Households carry more, at higher rates
The Federal Reserve’s triennial Survey of Consumer Finances, released in October, found the average US household credit card debt rose by $150, or 5%, to $3,100 between 2022 and 2025, while the median figure jumped by $1,300 to $8,000. Over the same period, the average credit card interest rate jumped from 14.6% to 21.4%, the survey showed.
The share of families reporting a balance after their last payment eased slightly to 44.7% from 45.2% in 2022, but the share of financially unhealthy cardholders rose to 60% this year from 56% last year, according to a J.D. Power survey cited in reports.
The cost of minimum payments
At the average APR of 19.67%, a $5,000 balance builds up about $82 of interest in a single month — and about $92 at 22.15% — before a single dollar of principal is repaid. Paid only through minimum payments, that $5,000 at 20% would take about 23 years to clear and cost roughly $7,723 in interest, Bankrate’s calculator example shows.
Revolving credit, mostly credit cards, stood at $1,352.4 billion in August, down 4.2% at an annual rate, the Fed data shows. Card delinquencies eased at Capital One and Synchrony in the third quarter, but with rates still above 20%, analysts said carrying a balance remains one of the most expensive ways to borrow.
There are some signs of stabilisation at the lender level. On October 20, Capital One and Synchrony both reported lower card charge-off rates than a year earlier, and slightly lower delinquency rates, according to reports on their third-quarter results. Capital One’s US card net charge-off rate was 3.98%, down from 4.71% in the second quarter and 4.63% a year earlier, while purchase volume rose roughly 11% from a year before. Lower losses at lenders do not automatically mean lower prices for borrowers, analysts noted, since card rates are set mostly by bank pricing and benchmark rates rather than by how many other customers pay late.
