Credit card late fees are inching back to pre-pandemic levels as federal stimulus payments and other relief expires, the CFPB said.
U.S. consumers paid $12 billion in credit card late fees in 2020, a drop from $14 billion in late fees paid in 2019, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said in a Tuesday report. But the bureau is concerned that late fee volume rose on a monthly basis between April and October 2021.
The fee uptick was caused by the expiration of federal Covid-19 relief payments and the Biden administration’s expanded child tax credit, which included direct payments to ...