By Karen Sternheimer
Recently my credit card fell out of a zipped lining in my handheld water bottle while running. I don’t usually carry a credit card for a run but planned on stopping for a breakfast burrito as a special treat when I was done. I hadn’t been to the restaurant before and wasn’t sure that they accepted Apple Pay (they did), so I thought best to have the actual card with me just in case.
I retraced my steps to no avail, it was gone. A lost credit card is easy enough to remedy. I went to the app and clicked that it was lost. It was inactivated and a new one would be mailed in 5-7 days.
This shouldn’t be a major crisis, especially after losing my home and most of my possessions in a wildfire a few months earlier. But it really upset me, and I used my sociological imagination to unpack why. The loss of a central artifact in our consumer culture sheds light on the role of consumption itself.
- Centrality of consumption
Even for someone trying to get by with less stuff, as I have written about over the years, consumption is central to survival in contemporary society. Whether it is purchasing food (most of us don’t grow our own), clothes (which we also typically don’t make ourselves), or paying our bills, we are part of a larger consumer economy. The loss of a job or decline in income can trigger not just personal anxiety but leads to less spending, which can create an economic downturn if enough people are impacted. This is why during recessions governments might create stimulus packages to encourage more consumer spending.
- Credit and debit cards represent the key to consumption
Purchases of many goods and services are now done through credit or debit cards. Pew Research Center reported in 2022 that 44 percent of Americans made none of their recent purchases using cash. This percentage rises to 59 percent for Americans with household incomes of $100,000 or more. According to Capital One, in 2024 85 percent of worldwide transactions were cashless. Their estimates suggest that by 2027, 94 percent of American transactions will be cashless.
This can create serious problems for those who are “unbanked,” or lack access to basic banking services like bank accounts, credit, or debit cards. A 2023 Federal Reserve Study found that 4.2 percent of American households—or about 5.6 million people—are unbanked. This represents a major decline since 2011, when 8.2 percent of households were unbanked. According to the report:
Unbanked rates were higher among lower-income households; less-educated households; Black, Hispanic, and American Indian or Alaska Native households; working-age households with a disability; households with income that varied a lot from month to month; and single-parent households.
These disparities have led some cities to ban cashless businesses and legally require the acceptance of cash. As I wrote about in 2023, some countries are still cash-centric. While traveling in Germany and Italy I encountered many situations where cards were not accepted.
- Your name is on the card
There’s something very personal about a credit or debit card, with your name on the card. It also contains that number that we strive to protect, and hackers work to get ahold of to make fraudulent purchases. The thought of a card with my name and number lying on a public street was somehow more upsetting that getting word of a security breach requiring a change of credit card number. This was the physical manifestation of my credit and made me feel vulnerable.
Credit cards are a way to verify our economic reputation; before urbanization, when people lived in smaller rural communities and moved around less, their reputations were easier to verify. For instance, if you lived in a small town where everyone knew who you were and for some reason you lacked cash or another item of value to trade or barter, they might feel comfortable offering you credit.
I didn’t grow up in a small town, but I had a family member who owned a drug store. Our family had an account there and they would just write down the items we bought and send us a bill each month. They knew who we were and where to find us, and it would have been deeply shameful not to pay the bill.
By contrast, credit bureaus exist to verify reputations in a complex economy. They know how much credit has been extended to you and how you have handled it. Do you pay your bills on time? What kinds of credit do you have, and how much debt (if any) do you have? Have you been responsible? The overall question—can this person be trusted—might be used to make decisions about not just your credit, but your car insurance premiums or whether you get a particular job. In many ways, your credit is who you are in a consumer-based economy.
- Credit problems can stop the consumption process
I happen to have more than one credit card and a debit card, so I can still make purchases. But for those who don’t have another access to the consumer economy, a lost card can be disastrous. Travelers might feel this as well if they find themselves on the road without access to credit or online accounts.
A stolen or lost card might mean that other people make purchases that we later have to deal with. Alternatively, a credit card might be a last resort for medical bills, which as of this year is supposed to be removed from credit reports. Difficulty paying bills and late payments can damage a credit score and create problems renting an apartment or buying a car, and paradoxically lead to higher interest rates and more difficulty paying for basic goods and services.
Credit cards are imbued with importance in our consumption-based economy; while losing my credit card was really a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things, it reflects our identity as consumers, a central facet of our social selves.