U.S. Small Business Credit Cards 2013: Quietly Waiting for Direction

Jan. 24, 2013 - PRLog -- Boston, MA – January 2013 - After a period of rapid product development, participants in the small business credit card space appeared to temporarily slow their product development cycles.    

The small business credit card market remains a critical one for U.S. credit card issuers.  With nearly 28 million small businesses and room to grow business card penetration, there remains significant opportunity for product growth.  This research is part of Mercator Advisory Group’s ongoing annual coverage to this topic.

“2012 certainly marked a year that took a break from the rapid product development cycle that we have seen in recent years, and when the market leaders appeared to focus more on execution than innovation.  This was perhaps an appropriate strategy for a year in which small businesses themselves searched for direction from the economy,” comments Ken Paterson, VP for Research Operations at Mercator Advisory Group and the primary author of the report.

Highlights of the report include:

The main inhibitor to growth in business card lending  

The impact of the credit CARD Act on the apparent shift toward use of personal cards and away from business cards

The estimated annual payment volume for the small business credit and charge card market

Status update on the major issuers’ cycle of adding charge products to their small business product families  

This report contains 22 pages and 9 exhibits.

Companies mentioned in this report include: American Express, Capital One, Chase, Discover, MasterCard, US Bank, Visa, and Wells Fargo.

Members of Mercator Advisory Group’s Credit Advisory Service and Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service have access to these reports as well as the upcoming research for the year ahead, presentations, analyst access, and other membership benefits.

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About Mercator Advisory Group

Mercator Advisory Group is the leading, independent research and advisory services firm exclusively focused on the payments and banking industries. We deliver pragmatic and timely research and advice designed to help our clients uncover the most lucrative opportunities to maximize revenue growth and contain costs. Our clients range from the world's largest payment issuers, acquirers, processors, merchants and associations to leading technology providers and investors. Mercator Advisory Group is also the publisher of the online payments and banking news and information portal PaymentsJournal.com.