Credit card lending is a competitive market with
thousands of card issuers, all free to establish their own
prices and other lending terms (Federal Reserve Board,
1994, 1997). While competition in the 1980s focused on
efforts to broaden customer bases by increasing the
availability of credit to higher risk consumers,
competition in the 1990s has focused on interest rates,
resulting in declining credit card interest rates in the
marketplace (Canner & Luckett, 1992