NEW YORK—Lenders are again welcoming borrowers with less-than-pristine credit, a vote of confidence in the health of the U.S. economy and Americans’ finances, according to one new analysis.
An estimated 29.2 million general-purpose credit cards were issued to people with credit scores of 660 and below last year, according to TransUnion, up from 20.4 million in 2020 and 26.3 million in 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“That is generally the threshold where lenders view consumers as having fair, rather than good, credit. Even subprime borrowers, a group shunned during the pandemic, are finding it easier to get credit,” The Journal said.