Many credit card holders are oblivious to changes made to their accounts, new figures suggest.

According to statistics from Credit.com, poor financial literacy is putting clients at risk of having changes made to their card accounts, highlighting the need for debt management, the Associated Press (AP) reports.

"I think a great deal of the disaster that occurred with subprime mortgages and now with credit cards is that consumers didn’t understand what they had agreed to," Adam Levin, chairman of Credit.com told the news group.

He adds that it is often not a priority for companies to teach credit card users financial literacy, which could add to the growing problems people face.

The figures show 66 per cent of cardholders claim they would not know if alterations had been made to their accounts, despite 15 per cent of people having their interest rates increased.

Latest statistics from Apacs, the UK payments association, shows 1.9 billion purchases were made on plastic cards during 2008, totalling £94.4 billion.

Out of all cards issued in the UK, 42.1 million are debit card holders.