Many consumers have found that having multiple credit cards causes confusion and ongoing credit problems, according to a recent report. Industry officials have said that having too many credit cards on the go could increase the chances of missed or late repayments and this could in turn lead to spiralling fees and damaged credit. However, worryingly, many people in the UK have multiple credit cards, which could partly reflect just why the UK’s personal debt mountain is so high.

One industry official recently stated: “In the UK we have a far more liberal approach to credit in many other European countries - the market has been liberalised since the early 1990s and really the credit card companies have been doing a lot of work, we’ve got a very competitive credit card market.”

He added: “There are plenty of reasons why people may have numerous cards - people might have one for work, for example, or you could have one which has got a transfer balance on it with a low interest rate, and then another one for purchases and that kind of thing…it can become confusing.”

Whilst credit conditions are now far tighter due to the ongoing global credit crunch that made its way to the UK last summer, credit conditions prior to this were pretty slack in the UK, and consumers enjoyed many years of easy credit. This enabled many consumers in the UK to get their hands on multiple credit cards, and many are still spending on all of these cards even in the current financial climate. Another recent report suggested that over three million Brits had five or more credit cards that they were juggling.

There are also concerns that many are applying for credit cards because they are becoming more reliant on credit to fund essential spending such as food, bills, and even mortgage repayments, which could quickly lead to unmanageable debt. One official said that it was fine for consumers to look at getting an additional card if it was to reduce debt, such as getting a 0% interest credit card to avoid interest payments rather than spending on a high interest card, but that consumers needed to be careful not to accrue lots of debt on different credit cards.

He said: ‘It is entirely healthy if people are swapping debts from one card to another, taking advantage of 0% deals to ensure that they pay as little interest as possible. But anyone who is trying to juggle five or more credit cards and owes money on all of them is in real trouble.’

The number of credit cards that consumers have been juggling has become a reflection of how reliant the nation has become on credit cards to make all sorts of payments, particularly with bills, petrol prices, and food prices soaring, leaving many unable to stretch their regular household income as far as it needs to go.

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