Why is my credit card balance not going down?

Because interest is added to what you owe before your payment is applied, so part of every payment is absorbed by interest before any of it touches the debt. If your payment is close to the month's interest, very little comes off; if it is smaller than the interest, nothing does and the balance grows.

If the balance has not moved right after you paid, check these before anything else: the payment may not have posted yet, the balance you are looking at may be a statement balance from before the payment, and purchases made since can put the balance back up by about as much as you paid.

A minimum payment is usually set near the interest charge plus a small slice of principal, so it is the slowest way to clear a card. The worked example below shows the split on a real set of numbers, under the rule and floor you choose.

Why the balance has not gone down after a payment

A payment can take time to post, and until it posts the balance you see does not include it. The figure printed on your statement is the balance at the statement's closing date, so a payment made after that date is not in it; the current balance in your account is what to check.

Purchases and fees that post after your payment add to the balance again. If the new charges are close to what you paid, the balance can look unchanged even though the payment arrived in full. Your account's transaction list shows both, with the date each posted.

Interest is charged before your payment lands

Card interest is generally accrued against the balance you carry and added on the statement, then your payment is applied. The result is that your payment has to clear the month's interest before it does anything about the debt itself.

This also means the effect reverses as you go: the same payment removes more principal every month, and the closing year of a payoff moves far faster than the opening stretch.

Minimum payments are designed to be small

Issuers commonly set a minimum at a small percentage of the balance, or at interest and fees plus a small slice of principal, with a dollar floor underneath. Because it is a function of the balance, it moves with the balance: where the balance is falling the minimum falls too, so paying only the minimum means paying less every month and the term stretches. Where the balance is not falling, it does not shrink either.

Minimum-payment formulas are not identical across issuers. Yours is in your cardholder agreement, and it is worth reading once.

New spending resets the progress

If you pay down the card and then put part of that back on it in the same cycle, the net reduction before interest is only the difference. This is the most common reason a balance looks frozen despite real payments, and the only fix is to stop using the card while you clear it.

Sometimes the balance truly cannot fall

If your payment is smaller than the interest charged that month, the balance grows no matter how reliably you pay. If it lands exactly on the interest, the balance neither grows nor falls — it simply stays where it is. Either way you are not getting anywhere, and that is arithmetic rather than a judgement about you: the remedy is a bigger payment or a lower rate, not more discipline.

The calculator above says so explicitly when it happens, instead of printing a date many years away.

Sources

1. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — How does my credit card company calculate the amount of interest I owe?
2. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — The box on your statement: paying off the balance in three years
3. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — Regulation Z, 12 CFR §1026.53 — Allocation of payments
4. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — Regulation Z, 12 CFR §1026.7 — Periodic statement
5. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — What is a grace period for a credit card?

Our source and corrections policy explains how these are chosen.

Related

• Credit card minimum payment calculator
• Credit card payoff calculator
• How credit card interest works
• How to pay off credit card debt