Credit Card Balance

Definition: A credit card balance is the amount of charges, or lack of that, payable to the credit card company.

Typically, it may take about 24 hours for the credit card company to update the credit card balance once the payment has been made on behalf of the credit card user. Time involved (For the update), may however vary depending upon the credit card company and how payments are made.

A credit card balance can be zero, if nothing is owed by the borrower; positive, if something is owed by the borrower; or negative, if payment is made over what is owed.

Interest rates on credit cards are fairly high. Accordingly, to avoid paying high amount of interest, it is advisable that borrower should always maintain a zero balance instead of maintaining a positive credit card balance.

Should there be any positive credit card balance,  the borrower can make more than the minimum monthly payment which will help him/her in bringing it down quicker,  resulting in less interest.