A sizable and growing minority of American consumers who once possessed a credit card no longer have one, according to a recent survey.

Surveys completed over the past two years by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s Consumer Payments Research Center indicate that the "discard rate," the percentage of consumers who have abandoned – voluntarily or not – that method of paying for purchases, grew to 16.5 percent in 2009, up from 14 percent in 2008.

The discard rate among consumers for prepaid payment cards was 27.5 percent in the 2008 survey, nearly twice as high as that for credit cards. Part of this higher rate is attributable to the frequent use of prepaid payment cards as gifts and prizes; a portion of those who are given prepaid cards are "passive adopters" of that payment instrument and do not tend to become regular users.

Checking accounts and debit cards, by contrast, have been discarded by approximately 5 percent of people who formerly used them. These figures were uncovered in the 2008 Survey of Consumer Payment Choice (SCPC), an annual study by the Boston Fed.

"Our preliminary estimates show increases in the 2009 discard rates for all types of cards – credit, debit and prepaid… It appears that the slowing economy and consumer caution have played a part in discard rate increases. We will be especially interested to see how the discard rate holds or changes for 2010, because the full effect of the economic downturn of the last two years should then be evident. Also, we may see additional effects from what has transpired on the legal and regulatory front, with the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act of 2009 that just recently went into effect," said Scott Schuh, director and economist at the Consumer Payments Research Center (CPRC).