Americans typically open 500,000 credit cards on Black Friday

The day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, is typically portrayed as a chaotic mess of American consumerism.

Based on data from Torsten Sløk, the chief international economist at Deutsche Bank, it is also a huge opportunity for credit card companies.

According to Sløk, Americans have opened roughly 500,000 in-store credit cards over the past three years. This is more than triple the average rate of just 150,000 cards for the other days of November, according to Sløk. Additionally, these are just retail store-issued cards and do not include any bank-issued cards.

The expanding number of credit cards is also running up the totals on American's balance sheets. According to Sløk the average store credit card balance for a household in the US is $332.