Credit Cards Weblog

Have you ever felt the need to hold those crispy green backs in your hand and say, ‘I am rich’! Perhaps, some of us from the older generation still have that craving, but this is changing very fast, especially for the younger generation. They are all for plastic money; credit cards and debit cards. For them, the old feeling does not hold much water.

The younger generation is shunning cash to such an extent that if they reach a place that does not accept cards, they rather not go there a second time. Visa USA has actually created a brand identity for this new breed. It calls them Generation Plastic or Gen P. According to Visa, 50 percent of Gen P’s payments are in one or another form of plastic money. Gen P’s extensive use of plastic money is also forcing merchants to start accepting credit and debit cards.

While, plastic money makes transactions easy and swift, it has a down side as well. Due to the ease of transaction, and Gen P’s insatiable appetite to consume, plastic money is leading to rapid depletion of an already low savings rate for the American economy.

America is the world’s most indebted nation and has a huge current account deficit, and plastic money is only making this worse.

For Gen P, ultimately left with low or no savings, plastic money may not be so real after all.