Credit cards are becoming as conspicuous as money itself. Surveys of Personal Finances report that the credit card usage rate among Hispanics has increased over the pastfew years relative to Anglos. Moderated by an acculturation covariate, this article explores the differences between Anglos and Mexican Americans on their bank and retail credit card usage behavior A pretested bilingual self-administered questionnaire was mailed to 6,863 households in a Southwestern city with a large Hispanic population. A final sample of 1,132 subjects was analyzed to test four hypotheses. Contrary to previous researchfindings, Anglos and Hispanic Americans showed no significant differences in their credit card usage behaviorfor bank, store, and gas credit cardcs when controlling for education and income.
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