The financial crisis is still having lingering effects on millennial spending habits. A recent report found that millennial's are growing more averse to credit, opting for debit or cash as an alternative, to the degree that many credit card companies are changing their operations to account for the shift.

In a new survey commissioned by Bankrate, a whopping 63% of millennials, or those aged 18 to 29, currently do not have a credit card, according to the survey. 23 percent of millennials have only one credit card, while a meager 6% have two or more cards. Compare this to 13% of those aged 30 to 49 who have two credit cards. And the numbers only increase with age - for example, 21% of those 65 and up have two or more cards.

Experts believe that this pivot towards debit or cash is mainly due to the fact that the millennial generation came of age in the midst of the financial crisis. When the Great Recession hit its worst, millennials were either just out of college or still in school, crippling their ability to find jobs at what normally would have been a formative career stage. Crushing student loans have left millennials skeptical of debt. According to the Project for Student Debt, the average amount of student loan debt for college grads from 2012 is nearly $30,000, and student loan debt grew 6% each year from 2008 to 2012. Burdened as they are by debt, millennials aren't keen to take on more.

Even independent of this, however, the effects of the financial crisis have had a ripple effect on other generations, too; Americans as a whole are shying away from credit in greater numbers since the recession.

Furthermore, the Credit Card Act of 2009 made it difficult for those under 21 to get a credit card without a co-signer or significant income, so it became more difficult for many millennials to get a card even if they wanted one.

Businesses are taking a hit from the credit aversion. Banks like JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM  ) and payment networks like Visa Inc. (V  ) and MasterCard (MA  ) aren't garnering the higher fees earned via credit cards. The debit card sector has leapt in recent years, and spending on Visa debit cards continues to grow at a faster clip then credit: Spending on the firm's debit cards jumped 16.3 percent in the first three months of 2018, helping the firm raise its financial outlook for the year. Credit card spending, by contrast, rose only 13.7 percent. Despite these leaps in the debit card sector, the losses from credit card fees are taking their toll.