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Article: Charge! Credit cards.(US credit card issuers entering UK market)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- December 7, 1996
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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BRITONS who like to borrow using plastic must envy card-carriers across the Atlantic. Compared with American shoppers, British consumers have long suffered a lack of choice and overly steep interest rates. That is now changing. Thanks to a competitive shake-up led by innovative American firms, British credit-card holders are at last starting to get deals worthy of a truly bustling and competitive market.
In most European countries, the credit-card industry remains a backwater. Britain is a lone exception: its consumers hold three times more credit cards than the rest of the European Union put together. Still, until now card-issuers' margins in Britain have remained ...