13% of US credit card balances are 90+ days delinquent, nearing 2011 highs

Nearly one in eight dollars owed on US credit cards is seriously overdue. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s latest data shows that 12.92% of credit card balances were 90 or more days delinquent in Q2 2026, barely off the 13.1% recorded in Q1, which marked the highest reading since 2011. To put that in perspective, total revolving credit card debt sits at roughly $1.26 trillion. So we’re talking about an enormous pile of money that borrowers have essentially stopped paying back on schedule. A five-point jump in three years Serious credit card delinquencies bottomed out during the pandemic years, when stimulus checks, enhanced unemployment benefits, and reduced spending opportunities kept household balance sheets unusually healthy. By 2022, the 90-plus-day delinquency rate was sitting around 7.6%. It has since climbed roughly five percentage points. That crisis peaked at 13.7% in early 2010. The current figure of 12.92% is uncomfortably close, separated by less than a single percentage point. One important caveat: the NY Fed’s data, drawn from the anonymized Equifax Consumer Credit Panel, measures delinquency differently than what individual banks report. The 30-plus-day delinqu...