Abstract:
The role of money as the major medium of exchange has been rapidly changing over time within this knowledge
economy, where needs are greatly complicated, and people largely consider security and convenience in fulfilling
them. Plastic credit cards have now replaced notes and coins and become a widely used source of convenient
credit for restaurants, hotels, on-line shopping, gasoline stations, grocery stores, dental and medical care etc. The
five leaders in the credit card industry today, are Visa International, MasterCard, American Express, Discover,
and Diner’s Club. In this study, credit cards of HSBC, Seylan, Standard Charted, Commercial, Hatten National,
Sampath, and Bank of Ceylon were considered. Data have been collected through a questionnaire distributed
among academic and non-academic staff in Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka. A sample representing
about 50% of staff living in Western, Sabaragamuwa, Central and Southern provinces will minimize the bias
due to selecting the sample from one university. A binary logistic regression model was fitted to discover the
effect of factors: Gender, Age, Occupation, Race, Education level, Religion, Residency and District on credit
card usage. Additionally, the reasons for selecting a bank, most popular credit card, transaction that credit card
is highly used and expected advantages were also found through a descriptive statistical analysis. The research
has revealed that Occupation has a significant effect on credit card usage while Gender and Age have a combined
effect. Findings of the study would be important to bankers, customers and especially to business policy
makers or planners in their decision making process mainly on business expansion.
