[…] The general tone of earnings season has been cautiously optimistic, as banks and payment networks have pointed to the willingness of consumers to keep spending. But some trends bear watching, particularly the delinquency and charge-off trends of those same firms. Delinquencies are a useful harbinger of charge-offs, as issuers deem debt uncollectible after a set amount of time, write the debt off, and there’s a ripple effect: The collections efforts ding consumers’ credit reports, and banks tighten their lending practices, which winds up making credit less available to the economy at large. Research detailed late last year that fully three-quarters of consumers had card debt; the percentage skews higher for cardholders who state they live paycheck to paycheck. The share of consumers who paid all of the monthly balance due stood at about 55% at the end of last year, which is actually a bit better than the roughly 52% seen during the summer. But the share of consumers paying only the minimum amount due ticked up, to 12.9% into December. [PYMNTS] […]