Canada’s credit card industry is very strong with much better loss and delinquency rates compared to its U.S. counterpart according to the first installment of Moody’s Investors Service’s new Canadian Credit Card Index, released today.

The report notes, however, that some early signs of credit deterioration may be emerging.

“Slowly rising credit card losses and the beginnings of increased delinquency, picked up by the Index, illustrate that competitive pressures in Canada may be pushing some Visaand Mastercard issuers here to begin loosening their previously tight credit standards in an effort to maintain growth,” said Moody’s analysts Sumant Inamdar and William Black, two of the report’s authors, in a release.

The new index tracks the performance of more than $30 billion in credit card debt and represents almost 76% of all outstanding Mastercard and Visa credit.

The consistently high payment rate in Canada is one of the more significant differences between U.S. and Canadian credit-card holders, according to the report. In Canada, many more credit cards are used for convenience than in the United States, the analysts said.