Credit card balances contract while issuers blame record APRs on coming late fee rule

The news: Consumer revolving credit—primarily credit cards—fell 1.2% on an annualized basis, per Federal Reserve data.

Credit card interest rates in the same month hit 21.76%, the highest since the Fed started tracking the figure.

What this means: One month of data is hardly enough to build a trend on. (Revolving credit surged an unexpected 9% annualized in July, for example.) But the small contraction fits a pattern of moderating growth after rapid increases during the pandemic.