It’s natural to use the new year as the impetus to reconsider your habits, including which credit card you use. After all, improving your finances is a popular resolution.
Considering Canadians are wrestling with both inflation and increased credit card fees, we need a credit card that offers us a lot in return. With this in mind, it might be time to evaluate your options.
The good news is, there are a number of exciting new credit cards and updates to existing credit cards rolling out in 2024.
From cards that help you spend more sustainably, to ones that now earn more rewards in spending categories affected most by inflation (like groceries), there’s something for every type of spender. With that in mind, we’ve rounded up 10 credit cards that are new to the market, have tweaked their offers or are simply good for what’s to come economically in 2024.
The Air France KLM Flying Blue World Elite Mastercard is relatively new: it was launched in October 2023 as a partnership with Brim Financial. Air France-KLM serves seven major cities in Canada—Quebec City, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary—so this gives you more than enough places to fly out of when planning a trip to Europe in 2024.
Plus, flying with Air France-KLM can give you promotional business class flights to Europe, ranging from $2,000 to $3,000 round-trip, during certain times in the year. Meanwhile, for every euro you spend on a flight, the Air France-KLM World Elite Mastercard will give you five Flying Blue Miles per dollar. So if you spend $3,000 CAD (€2,049 EUR), you’ll get 10,245 miles—and that’s on top of the 8,149 miles you’ll already receive because every regular ticket booked earns four Flying Blue Miles per euro spent. This means as a Air France-KLM World Elite Mastercard holder, you’ll earn 18,394, which is enough for another one-way ticket (and possibly a round-trip if a promotion on fares is being run on flights from your province).
This isn’t just a card for single individuals or couples either. Kids under 11 get 25% off Air France-KLM flights with this card and families of up to six people can pool their miles on one Flying Blue account. Plus, Air-France KLM is constantly running promotions where flights out of certain provinces cost fewer miles—so pay attention to those promotions and you might get to Europe for just 45,000 miles.
Day-to-day, the Air France-KLM World Elite Mastercard offers the following:
Though the card carries a $132 annual fee, just making purchases with this card extends the life of your Flying Blue Miles by two years. Plus, you’ll get a virtual card to add to your digital wallet on approval, so you can immediately start earning miles toward that upcoming European vacation.
Neo Financial’s line of credit cards has been given a facelift over the past year, going from the Neo Standard Credit Card and the Neo Secured Credit Card to simply, Neo Credit and Neo Secured Credit. Neo also added a prepaid card to the mix, called Neo Money.
Despite the cosmetic changes, Neo Secured Credit card remains the only secured credit card in Canada to offer rewards, having the same cash-back scheme as Neo Credit with 1% cash back on gas and groceries with a minimum of 0.5% cash back on all purchases each month. Plus, you can get up to 5% cash back at Neo retail partners and up to 15% cash back on first purchases at those same retail partners, which total 10,000 across Canada. Both Neo Credit and Neo Secured Credit offer all of this for no annual fee. The only caution with Neo cards is that the peak earnings they offer depend on the individual retailers you shop at, and are not guaranteed. (Though, a base rate of 0.5% cash back is guaranteed across all spending.)
As for its newest offering, Neo Money has all the same benefits as Neo Credit and Neo Secured Credit with a 2.25% interest rate on the money deposited into a linked Neo Money Account. Like the credit cards above, you can start using it immediately because a virtual version can be stored on your digital wallet before the physical card arrives. It works like a debit card because you can access cash and use it in-store and online without having to preload funds onto the card.
The Scotiabank Gold American Express Card is a serious contender for the best credit card in Canada for 2024. That’s because its welcome bonus offers up to 40,000 Scene+ Points (a $400 value) and the credit card is one of the few in Canada that comes with no foreign transaction fees. Not only that, but cardholders get a discount on a Priority Pass membership, which gives them access to 1,200 airport lounges worldwide. In addition, they get 24/7 concierge service that can help them book a restaurant reservation or get tickets to a show.
If you like free movies and food at Cineplex theatres, or discounted meals and entertainment at places like Swiss Chalet, Eastside Mario’s, Montana’s, The Rec Room and Playdium, then the Scene+ Points reward, earned by the Scotiabank Gold American Express, is for you. You can even redeem points for travel through the Scene+ Travel portal powered by Expedia with this card. You also get 12 types of travel insurance, including emergency medical, trip cancellation/interruption, flight delay and rental car insurance.
The Scotiabank Gold American Express Card earns a ton of Scene+ points. Here’s how it breaks down:
You get all this for an $120 annual fee, which is pretty average given the amount you can earn and the value of the perks you receive.
In 2024, Aeroplan is ushering in several changes to make their program more beneficial to Aeroplan Elite Status members.
Starting January 1, Elite Status members will get more value with Flight Passes. These are pre-booked one-way trips that can be arranged between specific geographical locations at particular times of the year when you choose to fly.
Instead of choosing between bonus eUpgrade credits (basically, the Air Canada currency for Elite Status members who want to upgrade their class of travel) or bonus Status Qualifying Miles (SQM)—miles that can take you to the next status level within the Aeroplan program—now you can have both.
The bonuses related to Flight Passes will be included as Elite Status Core Benefits and credited every time Elite Status members complete an eligible Flight Pass activity, based on the status they hold at that time:
Aeroplan is also changing the Lower Requalification Level benefit for Aeroplan 50K, 75K, and Super Elite members that choose this benefit in their select benefits above the core benefits they receive. Now, not only will the amount of SQM you need to qualify for the next status level be lower, but you will receive 5,000 Status Qualifying Miles (SQM) and 5 Status Qualifying Segments (SQS) as well. This means you can immediately start counting them towards reaching threshold eUpgrades and threshold gifts.
Meanwhile, access to Air Canada Cafés has also expanded. Previously, qualifying members could only bring one extra guest with them. However, in 2024, qualifying members will be able to bring a guest, their spouse and up to five dependent children. Access to these cafés will still be restricted to guests travelling in business class or Premium Rouge, Aeroplan 50K, 75K, and Super Elite members, Star Alliance Gold members, and for passengers with the following select Aeroplan premium credit cards:
So if you want to take advantage of these benefits, you need to achieve Aeroplan Elite Status quickly and rack up the Aeroplan Miles. The easiest way to do that is with a premium Aeroplan credit card like the TD® Aeroplan® Visa Infinite Privilege.* This card gives you $3,200 in value, including up to 100,000 Aeroplan points as a welcome bonus. It breaks down like this:
With the full 100,000 Aeroplan points in the first-year, you’ll achieve Elite Status Aeroplan membership in no time at all. You’ll also collect Aeroplan points in the following way:
All of this being said, this card comes with a $599 annual fee and an income requirement of $150,000 annual personal income or $200,000 annual household income. If you don’t meet the income requirement, go for the TD® Aeroplan® Visa Infinite* Card.
With credit card debt at an all-time high, the MBNA True Line Mastercard is the card to have in 2024. It remains the only credit card in Canada offering 0% interest on balance transfers for 12 months.
Meanwhile, the regular purchase interest rate is low at 12.99%. This combination means that if you’re like most Canadians and you carry a balance, you will have a year to pay off your balance with no interest as long as you transfer it to this card and pay the balance transfer fee of 3%. The only restriction is that you can’t transfer a balance from a card issued by TD Bank, of which MBNA is a division.
There’s also the matter of rewards, considering that this card still offers none. However, for most, the chance to pay off your credit card is reward enough, especially when there’s no annual fee with this card.
Are we seeing the last of the magnetic stripe? Back in 2021, Mastercard announced it would start phasing out magnetic stripes on credit cards in 2024. By 2033, no Mastercard will have them. Instead, chip cards and touchless technology will become the norm.
Now that 2024 is here, we wonder how soon we’ll see stripeless credit cards in the wild. It’ll certainly be interesting to see the first batch of cards without the now-ubiquitous stripe. Chip cards and mobile payments are more secure, so the move is understandable as security becomes more important with rampant fraud and security breaches.
Of course, once Mastercard paves the way, we’d expect others to follow.
With the rise of Tap and Pay and mobile wallets on your smartphone, the way Canadians pay for things has gone vertical. Swiping almost never happens unless you’re visiting another country where chip and PIN technology has yet to fully permeate the national payment networks.
Credit card issuers know this too, so they’ve started to change credit card design orientation to portrait instead of landscape. Check out the look of the BMO eclipse Visa Infinite Card as an example:
60,000 points
$120 (waived in the first year)
20.99%
60,000 points
$120 (waived in the first year)
20.99%
A premium rewards card with a competitive flat earn rate and a 10% boost on points for adding an authorized user.
Even though many still carry landscape oriented wallets for their cards and cash, it’s likely that the number of credit cards you’ll have to look up and down will only grow in 2024.
The federal government announced in December 2023 that it had finalized an agreement with Visa and Mastercard to lower credit card transaction fees for small businesses to 0.95%, down from an average of 1.5%. These changes will take effect in the fall of 2024.
While this undeniably offers some relief to small businesses that pay fees to process credit card transactions, it may also mean an indirect benefit to consumers because some businesses will not feel the need to raise prices even more due to this savings.
This could mean that credit card rewards could be devalued as credit card issuers raise their annual fees and don’t offer as lucrative a sign-up bonus, as happened in Australia and the UK when interchange fees were lowered in those countries.
However, the government has said that the Big Six Banks have agreed to protect Canadians’ reward points.
With travel surging and so many rewards cards on the market, there are bound to be changes and updates in 2024. Our predictions include new travel-focused benefits and cards that already offer no foreign transaction fees becoming more valuable. We also predict there will be a need for lower interest on balance transfers and purchases as credit card debt rises and lower interchange fees benefiting Canadian consumers indirectly in an inflationary period.
Credit cards themselves will physically change, with emphasis on secure payments that could see the magnetic stripe phased out and card design go fully vertical. Finally, lower interchange fees will help small business owners and, by extension, consumers save money in a high-interest economic environment. Beyond that, there are plenty of improvements to existing credit cards to enjoy in 2024.
