Best Canadian Banks & CCs for Affiliates

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Cataclysmic

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Jan 31, 2009
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I live in Canada. I'm getting screwed by constantly exchanging between $CAD and $USD, and I also need to incorporate. I'm currently with CIBC who can't give me what I want so I need to switch my banking & CC to elsewhere. This week I met with people at all 5 banks.

Here is what I learned - this is a summary of the most relevant points:

4245_82096722732_622752732_1709598_7478161_n.jpg


As you can see, BNS sucks the most, and for best it seems to be a toss-up between RBC and BMO. So... I would like to ask you other Canadian Affiliates:

  • What has your experience been like with RBC and BMO $USD business accounts and $USD CCs?
  • Does Facebook accept both of these two $USD CCs:
    BMO - Mosaik MasterCard For Business
    RBC - US Dollar Visa Gold​
  • How does Air Miles compare to RBC Rewards?
  • Have you experienced any problems / limitations using your RBC and BMO $USD business accounts and CCs online?
 


I feel your pain. I have a CIBC US dollar account and a US visa. The fact you can't pay your US visa bill online is beyond lame.
 
You the same guy who emailed me today?

If not, as I told the guy I would recommend BMO even though I do my banking with TD. That chart isn't completely accurate because you can transfer payments online to USD CC and see USD CC transactions with TD. BMO has the best USD BUSINESS CC though.
 
@Bryn - yes that was me I really appreciate your help thanks... just thought I'd get some other opinions also. Is it true as they told me that with the BMO CC you can only see 2-3 weeks history of transactions online, and that there's about a 1 week delay in the updates? (I like to check my accounts every day to make sure everything is running smoothly)
 
^^^

The most important thing is getting a card with a high limit. GO with the bank that you have history with already. Some measly miles aren't worth messing up your business cashflow. Id rather have no rewards then worry about paying off my card every day or two.
 
Looks like you've done your homework, I went through this exact same pain about a month ago.

I recently incorporated and was looking for a bank that had a USD CC and rewards. I didn't realize that TD allows you to pay their USD CC online through their Internet Banking System but again TD does not have rewards.

I ended up going with BMO and now have CC in both USD BMO Business and Royal Bank Visa. BMO's fees are only $6 per month which is dirt cheap. Incoming wire fees are only $14 which is awesome.

In contrast, I work for HSBC in IT. They charge $22 per month for a Business account, they have no USD CC, and their wire handling fees are $20.
 
vladb2 said:
^^^

The most important thing is getting a card with a high limit. GO with the bank that you have history with already. Some measly miles aren't worth messing up your business cashflow. Id rather have no rewards then worry about paying off my card every day or two.
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Agree with the high limit thing, but it's so worth it (if you can) get a CC with rewards. I've already racked up a couple long haul flights this year alone with my miles, which is better than nothing :)
 
Spliffic said:
I ended up going with BMO and now have CC in both USD BMO Business and Royal Bank Visa.
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Awesome those are the two I was thinking of... are you satisfied with them? How's the online reporting for both of them - is one more up to date than the other? Does one show a larger time period than the other for transactions?

BTW the way I see it, the rewards programs & differences in banking fees are just small bonuses and should pale in comparison to the actual profits from AM... but if the rewards & low fees are there, I'll take them :)
 
I'm pretty happy with my banking arrangements now. It took over a month to get everything the way I like it. I'm happy with BMO as a Biz Bank and the two credit cards (BMO USD Biz and RB USD Visa) have been good so far. I don't find much delay in reporting as mentioned above, but I pay my CC off every week so I stay out of hitting my limits. I also have personal CAD CC but those can be paid online so not such a concern. For the amount of money you will be pushing through your CC, you'd better get one with a reward program as you're just leaving money on the table.

The best part about BMO is that if you have a USD a/c, you can get money orders for free. So what I do once a week is go to BMO, pay off my BMO MC, then get a USD money order for my RB Visa balance, and then make a trip to RB to pay off the Visa. It's very smooth, whereas before I was withdrawing thousands of dollars in USD, carrying cash to the next bank and paying off that way. Too dangerous, and not a good system.

These fuckin banks need to offer the option of paying off USD MC/Visas from their online banking systems using USD. Bryn above said TD does this, but if you run other cards with other banks you still need to go into the branch and get cash/money order to pay off the other CC anyways.

BMO's fees are great too, $6 a month is peanuts for a biz account.

Like many others said, the more I make, the more cheap I get. It's very true, before I was living paycheque to paycheque at my 9-5 and spending lavishly. Now I have a bit of money in the bank, I watch every single transaction, fee, purchase, or anything to do with spending now. It's weird, but I don't mind :)
 
WTF said:
So you can't pay off your BMO USD MC online from your BMO USD account? Or you just do this to get the money order for your other card.
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Nope, most banks can't support USD bill payments online, even if you have a USD account. I could see if you had a CAD only account and wanted to perform an online conversion to USD to pay the CC off, but that's not the case :rolleyes:
 
This thread actually couldn't have come at a better time. I've always used a high limit canadian credit card and then paid it off online via my canadian business account.

I knew I was taking a hit on exchange and both the bank and credit card company were taking a bit off the top. Well my accountant got me my final numbers, I lost $17k CAD on top of exchange just from the extra points the banks are taking this past year.

I've been searching for a Canadian bank that meets all my needs, but everyone falls short. I don't want to be heading to the bank every week just to pay my credit card (yeah, I'm lazy).
 
Let me first say that ALL Canadian banks suck to a degree. The only way you're going to be truly happy is to work with 3 or 4 different banks who all have their one unique offering that you might need/want.

That said, pretty much all of the banks will give you access to their F/X floor if you trade more than $100K/yr. You're going to really have to twist your branch manager's arm to get this though. They lose a lot of money by sending you directly to the trading floor.

I've been using TD for about 7 months now and I pretty much always get mid-market rates. So yesterday I got 1.1766 and if I had gone through the regular TD channels, it would have been 1.1525. A 2% savings or more is pretty huge.

Since I hate banks, I love not giving them this money.

PM me if you need contact details of my TD guy, but again, ALL banks have this.
 
Spliffic said:
WTF said:
So you can't pay off your BMO USD MC online from your BMO USD account? Or you just do this to get the money order for your other card.
Nope, most banks can't support USD bill payments online, even if you have a USD account. I could see if you had a CAD only account and wanted to perform an online conversion to USD to pay the CC off, but that's not the case
Click to expand...
Nope, most banks can't support USD bill payments online, even if you have a USD account. I could see if you had a CAD only account and wanted to perform an online conversion to USD to pay the CC off, but that's not the case :rolleyes:
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The way they explained it to me is that you CAN pay off your BMO USD MC online from your BMO USD account... but they way you have to do it is by using the "Contact Us" link (or some link like that) on their website. You actually write out the instructions for them (i.e. "Please transfer $xxxxx from USD account to MC"). Then apparently they'll do it within 24 hours.... so you never have to actually go into a branch.

The MC number I was given is 1-877-345-7777 if you want more info.
 
Cataclysmic, sounds like you resolved your issues. But if you want more info you can read these threads.

http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-marketing/56035-canadian-affiliates-using-us-bmo-mosaik-cc.html

http://www.wickedfire.com/affiliate-marketing/52303-question-canadian-affiliates.html

I started few threads on the same issue few months ago as I was trying to find the answers to the same questions.

To summarize everything, this is what I do now. I have the following accounts and cards steup.

1. US business bank account in TD
2. US BMO Mosaik MasterCard with BMO

I go to a BMO branch every month (on a weekend) and pay the amount due on my BMO card with my TD cheque.

However, BMO told me that I can authorized BMO to automatically take out the money owed to my BMO mosaik card from my TD account when the payments are due. All you need to do is give them a void cheque of your business account and they will do the rest. I'm going get that set this month.
 
Do you mean pay off BMO USD Biz MC online from your BMO USD biz account? I am sure you can pay your personal USD MC account online by clicking account transfer.

Cataclysmic said:
The way they explained it to me is that you CAN pay off your BMO USD MC online from your BMO USD account... but they way you have to do it is by using the "Contact Us" link (or some link like that) on their website. You actually write out the instructions for them (i.e. "Please transfer $xxxxx from USD account to MC"). Then apparently they'll do it within 24 hours.... so you never have to actually go into a branch.

The MC number I was given is 1-877-345-7777 if you want more info.
Click to expand...
 
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