About a third of all the credit card customers in the country, or 50 million people, are considered “deadbeat” customers to credit card companies. These aren’t people falling behind on their payments however. These are people that have the gall to pay off their balance in full every month. If you’re one of these people, your ride on the monthly free-grace-period train maybe coming to an end.

For millions of people, credit cards are a convenient, easy way to make purchases while racking up award points, frequent flier miles, and other cardholder perks without ever paying a cent of interest. Many of these cards don’t even have an annual fee, making this free money as long as the payments are made on time.

The recent Stress Testing of the 19 largest banks in the country predicted a scenario in which banks could easily lose $82 billion in credit card related write-downs as the economy begins to recover. Issuers of credit cards need to find a way to recoup some of the revenue they expect to lose, and they are likely to come knocking on the door of their most responsible cardholders first.

One of the changes you are likely to see would be the addition of an annual fee if you don’t have one, or your annual fee to increase if you hope to continue participating in reward programs. Another would be the elimination of a grace period, which would mean your purchases would start accruing interest on the day the expense was incurred rather than after the grace period tacked on to the end of most billing cycles.

Even if credit card companies wanted to increase revenues by raising interest rates for cardholders that carry a balance, legislation in congress right now is expected to pass that would make it much more difficult for credit card issuers to raise rates.

The credit card industry has changed dramatically over the past 20 years or so, and more people are using credit cards than ever before. The changing financial landscape that we are a part of now is likely to lead to drastic changes in the way consumers use credit cards for the foreseeable future.

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Tags: credit card, fees, Interest

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