Yesterday, Silvio Tavares, President and CEO of VantageScore, joined Yahoo! Finance LIVE to discuss consumer credit health post-Black Friday shopping trends and spikes in the usage of buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) providers at the register.
“What we’re definitely seeing is consumers falling behind on payments. If you look at the last seven months, every month delinquencies [and] late payments have increased. And if you look at how consumers are using their credit cards, there’s some cause for concern. The average consumer is about 34% utilized on their credit card; that means they’re using about 34% of the available balances. But if you look at younger consumers and what we call Subprime consumers, those with a VantageScore 600, you’re seeing utilization rates at 90%. That’s causing some concern, and quite frankly, that’s a bit of what’s behind the spending numbers for the holiday season. A lot of those consumers are under pressure, under stress.”
Silvio’s comments can be found at the 1 hr, 10 minute mark at this link: Yahoo! Finance Live