CREDIT is becoming widely available in Singapore, with a plethora of products offered from traditional unsecured credit cards to alternative lines such as Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL).

Yet credit is something of a double-edged sword. It helps those with cash flow issues and rewards good repayment behaviour with better interest rates for loans. It’s also an easy way to rack up crushing debt with long-term consequences for future financial decisions such as buying a home.

Statistics from Credit Bureau Singapore (CBS) shows that 82 per cent of the 512,084 new credit applications in the fourth quarter of 2022 were for credit cards, with the rest for personal, real estate, motor vehicle loans and overdraft facilities.