Highlights. Americans made 165.0 million credit card purchases per day in 2025.

  • U.S. credit card transactions totaled an estimated 60.2 billion in 2025. 
  • Americans make 1,910 credit card transactions per second.
  • Major credit card companies processed 864 billion worldwide transactions in 2025.
  • Credit card users worldwide averaged 2.43 billion transactions daily over 12 months.
  • U.S. consumers use credit cards in 40% of retail transactions; they only use cash 10% of the time.
Nationwide Transactions 2025
Increment Transactions per
second 1,910
minute 114,597
hour 6,875,831
day 165,019,944
week 1,158,313,066
month 5,019,356,619
quarter 15,058,069,857
year 60,232,279,429

U.S. Credit Card Transactions

American cardholders use a credit card for an average of one transaction every 36 hours

  • In 2025, nationwide credit card transactions averaged 6.88 million per hour. 
  • Americans made 114,597 credit card transactions every minute.
  • The average U.S. cardholder makes 260 credit card transactions per year.
Global Transactions 2025
Increment Transactions per
second 28,152
minute 1,689,094
hour 101,345,667
day 2,432,296,011
week 17,072,846,998
month 73,982,336,990
quarter 221,947,010,971
year 887,788,043,884

Worldwide Credit Card Transactions

Global credit card transactions totaled 889 billion in 2025. 

  • Credit card users worldwide averaged 101.3 million transactions per hour in 2025. 
  • Worldwide, credit card transactions averaged 1.69 million per minute.
  • Global credit card transactions total 28,152 per second.
Major Processors’ Transactions per Minute
2024 2025*
Visa 556,865 614,895
UnionPay 502,201 663,158
MasterCard 363,445 419,500
American Express 23,300 25,072
JCB 12,162 12,652
Discover 7,741 8,043

*Projected

Credit Card Transactions per Processor

The world’s three (3) largest credit card processors facilitate over 864 billion transactions per year. 

  • The total number of transactions Visa processed reached 257.5 billion in its FY ending September 2025.
  • Visa, Inc. processed an estimated 323 billion global payment transactions in the 2025 calendar year.
  • UnionPay processed an estimated 349 billion global transactions in 2025.
  • Mastercard processed an estimated 220 billion transactions in 2025.
  • Other credit card processors, including Discover and American Express, processed an estimated 24.7 billion transactions.
Nationwide Transaction Values 2024
Increment Transaction Values per
second $188,490
minute $11,309,389
hour $678,563,314
day $16,285,519,540
week $114,311,819,849
month $495,351,219,345
quarter $1,486,053,658,036
year $5,944,214,632,145

Credit Card Transaction Volume Statistics

Transaction volume refers to the dollar value of transactions.

  • Americans used credit cards for an estimated $5.94 trillion in purchases in 2025, for an average daily purchase rate of $16.3 billion. 
  • The average U.S. transaction is for $98.69.
  • The four major U.S. processors facilitated $29.281 trillion in global consumer transactions in 2024.

Line Graph: Total U.S. Credit Card Transaction Values in trillions from 2015 ($2.80) to 2023 ($5.11) with projections to 2025 ($5.94) according to Statista

These data and insights were compiled by the Capital One Shopping team based on publicly available data.

Sources

  1. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Corporate Filings
  2. United States Census Bureau, Population and Housing Unit Estimates Tables
  3. Statista, Credit Cards Worldwide – Statistics and Facts