More Shoppers Charged It This Season : Retail: Card issuers saw large gains during the holidays. Big-ticket purchases were a factor.

Credit card companies on Monday said the use of plastic surged this holiday season, and many reported double-digit percentage gains from last year’s comparable period.

Economists said the sharp rise in card use during the gift-buying time of year reflects rising confidence in the economy and bodes well for a recovery that accelerated in the fourth quarter.

In addition to using credit cards, consumers have been taking out more loans for cars and other purchases.

“It’s quite a welcome development for the economy,” said Sandra Shaber, an economist at WEFA, an economic forecasting and consulting firm in Philadelphia.

“If we would not have had this upturn in borrowing, we would have had a continually anemic consumer sector,” said Shaber, who specializes in consumer spending.

Mastercard said the volume of charges cleared through retailers soared nearly 24% between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Visa reported a 32% jump in retail spending using its cards.

Both companies said the number of cards held by Americans has increased from last year, but not enough to explain the sharp surge in the dollar volume of purchases.

Mastercard, for instance, said individuals on average reached for the plastic 10.3% more often than during the first half of the year.

“People are using their cards more,” said Nancy Maffucci, a spokeswoman with Mastercard International, based in New York. “This is consistent with the growth seen this past year in use of credit cards versus last year.”

Dean Witter, Discover & Co., which issues the Discover credit card, would not provide specific figures, but it said card use was way up this holiday period from last year’s record levels.

The trend illustrates a growing willingness to take on consumer debt after two years of reluctance.

Consumer installment debt totaled $776.7 billion in October, the latest month for which Federal Reserve Bank figures are available. That was up about 5% from the 1992 total and nearly 7% from the 1991 total.

During those two years, consumers were paying down debt accumulated during the 1980s.

“Consumers had been paring their debt, so they felt better about spending this year,” said Albert Coscia, a spokesman at San Francisco-based Visa USA.

Consumer debt is still far below its peak of the 1980s. The debt-to-income ratio--a measure that compares consumer debt excluding mortgage loans to disposable income--is 16.2%. It was about 19% before the recession that began in 1990, Shaber said.

The recent increase in credit card use also indicates the aggressive marketing tactics of card companies. Many are offering incentives, such as discounts off purchase prices, for customers who charge the most.

In addition, Shaber said consumers tended to buy more expensive gifts, such as computers and home appliances, this holiday season, and people generally don’t carry enough cash to pay for such big-ticket items.