摘要

随着现代金融服务业的发展，信用卡已经渗透到我们日常生活的方方面面，我们越来越离不开它带来的各种便捷：信用卡消费、网上银行、银行即时转账。从持卡人同时拥有银行卡的数量来看，表明银行卡虽已逐步从工资载体和储蓄凭证发展为居民日常消费支付的重要工具，但整体普及水平仍然落后于发达国家。和中国才起步没有多久的信用卡业务相比，美国的信用卡业务已经进入了高度成熟期。据不完全统计，银行和其他金融机构提供的信用卡的选择多达3万多种，在美国，人均持卡数也在5张以上。作为重要的支付手段，信用卡具有准货币功能，可以说是美国经济这部机器上的一个重要齿轮。美国经济约七成是靠消费拉动的，而美国人的消费有近三成通过刷卡实现。
我国的信用卡市场经历了二十多年的发展，在市场规模、网络建设、配套服务等方面取得了一定成绩，我国的信用卡市场已初具规模，相对于国外发达的信用卡市场以及我国比较发达的借记卡市场来说，我国信用卡市场还有巨大的发展空间和潜力。越来越多的国内经济学方面的专家研究中国信用卡市场的发展现状，他们大多把目光锁定在经济层面，把信用卡市场的一些问题归究为一类经济问题，很少有涉及到我国的文化层面。本文通过收集网上对信用卡统计相关数据分析，对中国和美国信用卡的不同的使用现状展开讨论。本课题将就信用卡的在中国和美国所扮演不同的角色而展开，也就是为什么信用卡在目前的社会中所起到的影响力而进行分析。本文综合了国内外的文章的数据结果，发现，其实信用卡的使用情况之所以不同，除了经济上的因素外，很多是与我们的文化有关系的。

关键词：信用卡，角色，文化影响，发展变化
 
Abstract

With the development of the financial service industry, which has penetrated into every aspect of our daily lives, we cannot live without electronic varieties of convenience, including the credit card, online banking, bank-transfer immediately. In China, from the number of the cardholders who own different cards, it shows that the bank card gradually has become an important tool for the resdents to pay from the carrier of the wages and the savings certificates, but the overall penetration levels are still lagging behind developed countries. Compared with China’s lately started credit card business, the U.S. credit card business has entered into a high degree of maturity. According to incomplete statistics, the kinds of credit cards provided by banks and other financial institutions have been up to 30,000.  In the United States, the per capita number of cardholders is 5 or more. As an important means of payment, A credit card with a quasi-money function is regarded as the vital cog in the U.S. economy. And 70% of the U.S. economy relies on the consumption, while the 30% of the U.S. consumption  has been realized through credit cards.
Since the China’s credit card market developed more than twenty years, the market size as well as the network construction, support services has achieved a higher level. The credit card market has taken shape in China. Although compared to the foreign developed credit card market and more developed debit card market in China, there is a  large room for the developing credit card market in China. More and more domestic economists have been doing research on the development of the credit card market in China, and most of them focus on the economic level, and regarded it as a kind of economic behaviors. People rarely think the difference results from the cultural differences.
According to the statistical data on credit cards in China and the United States, we discussed the different using status in the two countries. Starting from the different roles that the credit card plays in the two countries, and then analyzing why it influnces the current society so seriously, this thesis tries to explore the reasons for different using status in the two countries  and  concludes that  the discrepancy is related to the culture as well as the economic factors.

Key words: credit-card, roles, cultural-influnce, developments