By David Bright ( September 19, 2017, 10:29 AM EDT) -- Consumer purchasing habits and the means to finance the purchases is experiencing unprecedented changes and disruption. New financial technology (fintech) offerings are driving a majority of the disruption. However, a contributing factor is the increasing view (especially by millennials) that the use of a credit card to make point-of-sale and online payments is a broken system that comes with hidden fees, penalties and unreasonable interest rates. In fact, recent studies find that only 33 percent of millennials have a credit card, while 55 percent of 30- to 49-year-olds and 62 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds, respectively, have them, and ownership rates among Americans 65 and older is even higher. As a result of the decline in credit card ownership, consumer product sales in the U.S. are increasingly being driven by alternative point-of-sale (POS) financing solutions....