Credit Card Market Averages
The ongoing purchase rate Australian card issuers advertise. Promotional and balance transfer rates are left out of the average because they expire, and including them would report a rate almost no cardholder is on for the life of the card.
Where the market sits today
Every product we list in this category, at its headline rate. Across 196 products from 59 providers, as at 19 Oct 2026.
The lowest rate published by any provider in this category on the day.
The midpoint. Half the products sit either side of it, so a handful of outliers cannot move it the way they move an average.
12.99 percentage points above the cash rate. The RBA cash rate is 4.60%, unchanged since 30 Sep 2026. Source: Reserve Bank of Australia
How it has moved
Every segment
| Segment | Average | Median | Lowest | Products | Providers | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All productsEvery product we list in this category, at its headline rate. | 17.59% | 19.49% | 0.00% | 196 | 59 | Rose +1.14% |
A product counts once in a segment however many rates it publishes for it, so one provider’s balance tiers cannot move the average.
CompareThat Rate Tracker, Credit Card Market Averages, 19 Oct 2026. https://comparethat.com.au/rates/credit-cards
How this average is arrived at, the headline figures behind it with their ABS and RBA sources, and the tracker across every category we cover.
- Statistics Australian Credit Card Statistics: Rates, Fees and Debt Australians hold around 14.4 million personal credit cards and carry roughly $18.9 billion of debt that is actually accruing interest. Here is what that debt costs, live from the cards we compare.
- Rate Tracker Every Market, One Page The daily average across home loans, savings, term deposits, credit cards and personal and car loans, measured against the RBA cash rate.
How these figures are calculated
- Where the numbers come from
- Every provider’s own published product data, read directly from their Consumer Data Right product reference endpoints and re-checked daily. We do not survey lenders and we do not ask them what to print. See where our data comes from.
- What is averaged
- Every product we list in the category, taken at the headline advertised rate shown on its card, so an average on this page is taken on the same rates as the tables on the rest of the site. We do not compare every product in the market, so these figures describe the products we list. A segment narrows that set to one combination of rate type, borrower purpose, repayment type or term, and the figure carries the count of products and providers behind it. The home loan headline is one such loan: each lender’s variable owner-occupier principal and interest rate, because a fixed special and a variable rate averaged together describe no loan anyone can take out.
- Loans and their comparison rates
- Each home, personal and car loan average is printed with an average comparison rate, taken over the loans in the average rate that publish a comparison rate. A loan whose lender publishes no comparison rate is not listed in our tables unless we choose to list it, so it is usually left out of every figure here, including the counts of products and providers. Where a loan is listed more than once, such as once per fixed term, each listing is judged on its own: a listing with no comparison rate is left out unless we list the loan anyway, and the loan counts at its lowest listed rate. Where we do list a loan without a comparison rate, our tables show “Comparison rate not published” beside its rate, and it counts in the average rate, the median and the counts, but never in the average comparison rate or as the lowest rate. Personal and car lenders often price by risk and publish a range of rates for one loan: the averages take the lowest rate in that range, the rate our tables sort on, and most applicants are offered more than that. A loan listed with both fixed and variable rates counts once in the headline average, at its lowest listed rate, and once in each of the fixed and variable segments it is listed in.
- Each product counts once
- The averages are unweighted. A lender with four hundred loans on its book and a lender with four count the same per product, because market share is not published in the feed. These figures measure what the market advertises, not what Australians hold.
- Advertised rates, not offered rates
- Providers publish the rate they advertise. Package discounts and anything negotiated at application are not in the data, and where a lender publishes a risk-based range only its lowest rate is averaged, so a borrower with a strong application may be offered less than the figures here, and one with a thin file may be offered more.
- One reading a day, kept
- The aggregate is computed once per calendar day and stored, so a figure published on a given date does not move afterwards, unless we change how a figure is calculated. Then the whole series is recalculated on the new basis, so a change between two readings is never a change in our method. The home, personal and car loan series were last recalculated on 7 Oct 2026, to count only the loans we list. The archive currently holds 90 daily readings, the first taken on 22 Jul 2026.
- How a move is measured
- A change is the current average against the oldest reading in the last 40 days, not against a fixed calendar month: the series only holds a row for a day the aggregation ran. Every movement figure names the date it is measured from.