(Reuters) – The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said on Thursday credit card annual percentage rate (APR) margin cost was at an all-time high, about $25 billion extra each year.
The consumer watchdog said it had found consumer credit card market was controlled by a few players and evidence of practices inhibiting customers’ ability to find alternatives to expensive credit card products.
Major credit issuers raised the average APR margin by 4.3 percentage points over the last 10 years, increasing costs for consumers by billions of dollars a year, CFPB said.
APR represents the annual cost of money borrowed expressed as a percentage. For credit cards, APR is typically just interest.
(Reporting by Arasu Kannagi Basil in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
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