Hi Google Answers,

I would like to know:

What percentage of the total population of the USA use credit cards.

What percentage of the total population of the UK use credit cards.

What percentage of the total population of the Japan use credit cards.

What percentage of the total population of the Germany use credit cards.

What percentage of the total population of the France use credit cards.

What percentage of the total population of the Italy use credit cards.

What percentage of the total population of the Spain use credit cards.

What percentage of the total population of Denmark use credit cards.

What percentage of the total population of Sweden use credit cards.

What percentage of the total population of Finland use credit cards.

What percentage of the total population of Iceland use credit cards.

Thanks for your interesting question.

An organization known as the Bank for International Settlements in
Switzerland serves as a clearinghouse for a number of international
banking functions, and they also provide a great deal of financial
information about banking-related activities.

A listing of their major reports can be found at the BIS website:

http://www.bis.org/cpss/cpsspubl.htm

and includes a report entitled:

No. 54, Report: Statistics on payment and settlement systems in
selected countries - Figures for 2001 , April 2003

The link to the report itself (in PDF format) is here:

http://www.bis.org/publ/cpss54p2.pdf


This report contains a great deal of information on credit cards and
other electronic payment systems in many countries around the world. 
In particular, Table 9 contains details on the number of cards held
per thousand people:


Belgium............................... 296.2
Canada ..............................1,505.9
Germany ...............................227.9
Italy .................................345.2
Japan................................1,820.1
Netherlands .......................... 311.7
Singapore ............................ 681.2
Sweden ............................... 418.7
Switzerland ...........................451.9
United Kingdom........................ 936.4
United States....................... 4,329.5


Two other tables worth noting are:

Table 10 -- Use of cards
Table 13 --  Relative importance of cashless payment instruments


I hope this provides you the information you need.  If anything here
is unclear, or if you would like additional information, just let me
know by posting a Request for Clarification, and I?ll be happy to
assist you further.

pafalafa-ga


search strategy: used bookmarked links to the BIS website

I've found the statistics you need for the year 2001 (the most recent
data available) for some -- but not all -- of the countries you
inquired about, and som other countries as well:
 
Belgium 
Canada 
France 
Germany 
Hong Kong 
Italy 
Japan 
Netherlands 
Singapore 
Sweden 
Switzerland 
United Kingdom 
United States 
 
For each country, the number of credit cards, debit cards and check
cashing cards in use is given for 2001 and 2000.
 
Would this information serve as an answer to your question?

Yes this would be very good.