Credit card providers could be putting themselves and their customers in a vulnerable position by not carrying out sufficient credit checks on each application, new research from uSwitch.com has found.

UK debt has hit £1.4 trillion, and in 2007 £17.3 billion of debt was written off when customers could not afford to repay their borrowings. But, according to uSwitch, 4.8million successful credit card applicants were not required to provide validation of the information on the application form, such as proof of income.

This 84 per cent of all credit card applications gained each customer an average credit limit of £3,545 – 20 per cent of the average salary and a total of more than £17billion – without having to provide a single piece of verification, which could indicate their suitability for that level of credit.

Of people who were given a credit card, 14 per cent said that they were not asked about their salary or outgoings at all, but gained a total credit limit of almost £2.9billion. Just eight per cent were asked for proof of income or outgoings