A significant 3m people – 1 in 10 – use their credit cards daily, according to new research from Abbey and 18m of us flash the plastic at least once a week.

Plus 20m people say they use their cards for buying goods online, and men are more inclined towards online shopping than women with 69% regularly doing so compared with just 52% of women.

But 35% of credit card holders say they only use their card once a month, and surprisingly, they tend to be younger people. 

Encouragingly over 19m of us (57% of credit cardholders) pay off the balance on our cards every month, 24m of us (72%) claim to ‘regularly’ pay off our card balance while only 3% (1m cardholders) ‘rarely’ manage to pay off their balance.

Roger Lovering, Managing Director of Abbey Credit Cards, said: “There is no one way that people use their credit card and we see as many different spending patterns as there are people. Our job, as a credit card provider, is to offer benefits on our credit card that are relevant to all the different types of credit card user. Currently we have a supermarket cashback offer, which has broad appeal, however in the future we hope to be able to segment our customer base and offer targeted benefits that suit them as an individual.”