[ANALYSIS] Canadian Tire Options MasterCard

We recently wrote about the revised Canadian Tire loyalty program and how the company has made a strategic move for it to go digital. Canadian Tire has also introduced their own credit card, the Canadian Tire Options MasterCard, which will allow customers to earn reward faster. Here are the highlights of the credit card:

• No Annual Fee
• Earn 10X e-Canadian Tire Money when you spend at Canadian Tire Stores
• Earn 10X e-Canadian Tire Money when you spend at Sport Check, Mark’s, PartSource and Canadian Tire Home Services
• Earn e-Canadian Tire Money at participating Canadian Tire gas bars
• Earn 2X e-Canadian Tire Money when you spend elsewhere

With a regular Canadian Tire loyalty card or paper currency, rates are earned at five cents per every $2 transaction. If you make a transaction between the range of $2 to $5.98, you will still earn five cents. It is not only until you make a transaction higher than $5.98 will you earn ten cents. This is because Canadian Tire currency only exists at a minimum of five cents increments. This will mean that depending on how much you spend at the time, your earnings will range from approximately 0.8% up to 2.5%.

Consequently, if you only made a $2 purchase, as a Canadian Tire membership holder, you would only earn five cents at that visit. But if you had used your Canadian Tire Options MasterCard, you will earn 10X that amount, which is fifty cents. However, since the transition of the digital program, earnings have also changed.

Let’s take a look at the chart below:

According to Ratehub, every 100 points is equivalent to $1, which means that if you are earning at a rate of 1 point per dollar, this means that your return is approximately 1%.

This is really confusing as the website doesn’t explicitly give you concrete rates on exactly how you are earning those points. We will assume that the cash back rate is 1% in Canadian Tire ‘Money’.

Is the card worth applying for?

The card doesn’t require you to have any income or family income, which means that if your credit score is not perfect, this may be the card that will help you heal your credit report. If you don’t frequent Canadian Tire stores, then this credit card may be useless to you since you will only earn strictly Canadian Tire ‘Money’, which cannot be transferred into any other currency.