Australians will ‘gift’ an estimated $10.7 million to their credit card providers in the form of extra interest revenue in January, new research from Australia’s leading financial comparison website, RateCity (www.ratecity.com.au) has found.

Credit card users owe a massive $48.8 billion on their cards, with more than $34.2 billion accruing interest, latest Reserve Bank figures show. And RateCity estimates that plastic debts will balloon by 2 percent in January as the nation deals with Christmas spending hangovers.

Alex Parsons, CEO of RateCity.com.au, said the simple fact is we spend a lot more over the Christmas season on our credit cards than in other months.

“On average, January is the month where Aussies stack on the most credit card debt and it’s a good bet they’ll be higher again in January 2014 – for a start, there are over 200,000 more credit cards on issue than there were last Christmas,” he said.