Big banks wake up to ‘credit invisible’ black Americans
The plan to offer credit cards to people with no credit scores could benefit black and Hispanic Americans
The following headline from The Wall Street Journal is something of a Rorschach test for how a reader feels about the biggest US banks: “JPMorgan, others plan to issue credit cards to people with no credit scores.”
Someone who remembers the conditions leading up to the 2008 financial crisis might rightfully wonder if this is a ploy by large financial institutions to rope customers into onerous terms, just as they did with sub-prime mortgages. After all, this news comes when Americans’ credit card balances have plunged by $157bn since the end of 2019 to the smallest in four years; that’s a serious blow to banks’ bottom lines. Why not reach out to those with little-to-no credit history to make up the shortfall?..
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