Credit cards go unused by shoppers

Nearly half of Britons carry credit cards they have not used in the past 12 months, a study has shown.

A quarter of people have one dormant card while 11% have two and 10% have three relegated to the back of their wallets, according to Morgan Stanley.

Those with expired 0% offers were most likely to go unused with 33% simply taking up space in wallets.

Some 21% of credit cards taken out with the cardholder's bank also get forgotten about, with two-thirds of these coming from the 'big four' banks.

In contrast, cards offering reward schemes are most likely to be used for everyday spending.

About 70% of people with a card earning them cashback said they used this most frequently to pay for goods while 60% of people with cards offering points-based rewards claimed to put most of their shopping on them.

Just under a quarter of the 2,000 people surveyed said they had more than one card which they regularly used or which had a balance on it.

The more credit cards a person owns, the more likely they are to forget about some of them.

Those with four credit cards had an average of 2.1 lying dormant and this rose to 2.4 for those owning five cards.

Patrick Muir, marketing director for the Morgan Stanley Credit Card said: "Millions of cardholders are taking advantage of loyalty schemes for their everyday spending, with these cards least likely to be lying idle in wallets."