Canadian Credit Card Risk Holds Steady as Q2 2026 Closes

Key Takeaways

• Delinquency remains broadly stable
  One-missed-payment accounts held at 5.58%, flat year-over-year. Two-missed dipped slightly to 0.87%, three-missed rose marginally to 0.39%, no signs of broad deterioration.
• Spending and credit limits are both growing at a healthy pace
  Average spend hit $1,906 in June, up 3.8% year-over-year and recovering from March's $1,584 trough. Credit limits grew 5.9% year-over-year, outpacing balance growth (5.6%) and keeping utilization manageable.
• Balances are outpacing repayment, a trend worth watching
  Balances rose 5.6% year-over-year to $3,415, while payments to balance fell to 51.25%, down 1.5 points. Since delinquency lags repayment behavior, this gap is the key indicator to monitor.
• Cash-advance activity Is ticking up alongside slower repayment
  Cash sales rose 0.38 points year-over-year to 2.54% of total sales, and cash utilization climbed to 20.03%. Combined with slower repayment, it's the second metric flagged as worth watching. 

As we close out the second quarter of 2026, delinquency and credit risk indicators look broadly stable. Accounts with one missed payment are at 5.58% (essentially flat year-over-year, down 0.4 points month-over-month), two-missed-payment accounts are down slightly year-over-year (0.87% vs 0.89% a year ago), and three-missed-payment accounts are up only marginally (0.39% vs 0.38% a year ago). The Canadian credit card landscape continues to show resilience.

Key Trend Indicators Canadian Cards – end of Q2 2026 

Spending is accelerating again after the first-quarter dip. Average credit card spend hit $1,906 in June 2026, up 4.6% from May and up 3.8% from June 2025 ($1,836). This caps a recovery from the trough seen in March 2026 ($1,584), suggesting the usual seasonal pull-back early in the year gave way to a stronger spring/early-summer pickup in spending.  

Average card balance reached $3,415 in June 2026, a 5.6% year-over-year increase and 1.2% month-over-month increase, meaning balances are climbing at a slightly faster clip than spend on a YoY basis. At the same time, the percentage of payments to balance came in at 51.25%, which is 1.5% lower than June 2025, even though it rose 1.3% points from May. This means cardholders are carrying somewhat more balance relative to what they're paying down each month than they were a year ago, even as the month-over-month trend within Q2 2026 looks like it's improving.

Taken together, the June 2026 snapshot points to a portfolio where spending and credit limits are both expanding at a healthy pace, delinquency remains stable, but balances are growing a bit faster than repayment rates and cash-advance usage is increasing as well, which is the trend most worth monitoring going forward.

Implications and Considerations for Lenders

Lenders can feel comfortable without concerns to tighten, since there's no evidence yet of broad-based deterioration or payment stress. That said, the slower payment-to-balance trend is worth watching as a leading indicator, since delinquency often lags behind changes in repayment behavior.

Credit limits are growing faster than balances (5.9% YoY versus 5.6% YoY); combined with the fall in the percentage of accounts using their cash limit (9.44%, down 0.53 points). this suggests lenders have been extending credit lines proactively and that utilization at the account level remains manageable. This gives lenders some room to continue growing limits without immediately pushing utilization-based risk scores higher, which can support continued spend growth and interchange revenue.

The picture supports continued growth-oriented strategies such as limit increases and spend-driving promotions at a controlled frequency. However, lenders should pair that growth with surveillance of the payment-to-balance trend and cash-advance usage specifically, since those are the two metrics moving in a direction that could precede future credit deterioration, even though headline delinquency rates remain healthy at the moment.

These card performance figures are part of the data shared with subscribers of the FICO® Benchmark Reporting Service. The data sample comes from client reports generated by the FICO® TRIAD® Customer Manager solution in use by some 90% of Canadian card issuers.  

For more information on these trends, contact FICO.    

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• Explore our solutions for customer management.   
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