There's a lot of confusion around how these cards work and what these statistics measure. In this article they are talking about the sum of all balances on cre

There's a lot of confusion around how these cards work and what these statistics measure. In this article they are talking about the sum of all balances on credit card accounts. Technically all of this money is borrowed, even if, as some commenters say, you "pay in full every month." You're just only getting charged interest after typically 30 days. Using terms like "revolving debt" to describe interest charges is imprecise, as is describing payments on interest-bearing debt as "paying late." Interest is interest, and debt is debt. How do credit scores distinguish debt from interest from defaults, the inability to pay interest (sometimes principal)? It doesn't matter. Before Lending Club hid them, the variables that were strongest correlated with borrower race and borrow age were most correlated with default on loans. But debtors who accrue interest via credit cards and pay it are the most desirable, because obviously they are the debtors who make money for the creditor. The fastest way to get the best credit card offers is not to pay off your balance in full before interest is accrued; instead, accrue some interest and pay it off. Then you become Mr. Credit Card Offer, Eater of Spam Mail. I think a lot of aversion to credit cards (and borrowing generally) is just financial illiteracy. Universally people conflate debt and interest. They get dinged by the horrible experience of forgetting to pay once, even if the total interest paid was less than 0.1% of their expenses in a year. Put another way, if you gave me access to low interest debt, of course I'd take it... And open a bank! The real scam is mortgages. Financial illiteracy makes people minimize monthly payments instead of "finance charges," one of the most precise (broad and well defined) but poorly understood terms on a mortgage. There are millions of wealthy suburbanites paying 30 year mortgages with finance charges equal to nearly half the value of the home—a 50% markup for the privilege of lower monthly payments.