Credit Cards: The Next Financial Crisis?

Credit card lending became "a bit too aggressive," said John Ulzheimer, the president of consumer education for Credit.com, a credit card information site. "People were getting credit vehicles maybe they should not have been getting. Those bad issuances of cards are, in many cases, coming home to roost right now."

Related

Worst Credit Cards Deals

Americans 'Addiction' to Credit Cards

WATCH: Addicted to Credit Cards

Sink or Scramble?

Manning said it was important to note the distinction between companies like Mastercard and Visa and banks. While Mastercard and Visa are prominent card names, they're largely marketing operations that don't actually extend credit. That falls to financial institutions like American Express, Capital One, Citibank and Bank of America, which issue Mastercard and Visa cards, among others.

Analysts agree that credit card troubles alone likely won't be enough to topple any one bank in the same spectacular fashion that subprime mortgage losses led to the collapse of Bear Stearns.

But Ron Ianieri, the chief market strategist for the investor education company Options University, said that for banks already suffering from other financial woes, more trouble on the credit card front "could be enough to be the straw that breaks the camel's bank."

"I don't think a credit card crisis would be strong enough to collapse a bank under normal conditions, but these aren't normal conditions," he said. "These banks are teetering right now as it is. One more push -- it doesn't have to be a big push -- and it could knock them off the top."

Analysts like Ulzheimer, however, don't see the need to ring any alarm bells and neither, apparently, do the banks.

"We obviously do not know the extent of the current downturn, but the position of our company today is financially sound and competitively strong," American Express CEO Ken Chenault said in a Monday conference call on the company's earnings.

A similar message came from Richard D. Fairbank, the CEO of Capital One, which saw its second-quarter earnings plummet to $452.9 million from $750.4 million last year.