John Price, managing director of Americas Market Intelligence, and Lindsay Lehr, managing director of Payments & Commerce Market Intelligence: “Banking greed is too simplistic an explanation for Brazil’s onerous credit card interest rates. Consumers are encouraged by retailers, employers and socially to rely on credit to buy anything beyond daily expenses, in the form of ‘parcelados’—installment payments that stretch the spending limit of credit cards. Retailers offer parcelados to sell products to a consumer base with little savings. Card-issuing banks typically don’t earn interest on parcelados, choosing to subsidize them by charging high interest on revolving credit card debt. High delinquency rates generate additional losses that must be recouped by revolving credit revenues. The ability of banks to earn money on credit cards is abating with time. The growth of fintechs, payment companies and buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) lenders is eating away at the consumer lending dominance of banks. Some of these new competitors offer…”