We are on the final 2 months of a strong year of higher than normal credit card sign up bonuses that went along with record high bank profits, which is a nice surprise, because I would think that when banks are making a lot of money, they aren’t as interested in finding new clients.
Two of CIBC’s retail co-branded credit cards are being discontinued. The CIBC Petro-Points MasterCard Card and CIBC TELUS Rewards Visa Card. It is always disappointing to see credit cards being discontinued, as it decreases the competition in the market.
CIBC is offering several promotions at the same time, but this time with an unfortunate catch. I reviewed the wording on several of its credit cards. This is the trend that I noticed. If it is a promotional offer, you will find this term:
I have been ranking the overall credit card portfolios of each financial institutions. However, I think it may be worthwhile to rank business credit card portfolios only. As I have been collecting my own batch of business credit cards, this will be helpful for me too.
Another month, another list of higher than normal credit card sign up bonus promotions. As we close out the year, it does seem like we may be closing out the year strong, granted many of the current offers expire at the end of the month. This year has been a great overall year for credit card sign up bonuses, even though we’ve been seeing record high profits from the major banks.
A reader asked me last time, what the purpose was of this ranking. Basically, you do what you want with the list, take it for what it is. As a consumer, this list can give you an idea on where to shift your business. For example, if you want to see some of the smaller companies survive and thrive, you will know where to move your business.
The list has really trimmed down for this month. I really hope that it picks back up as we lead into the fall, but with record profits, that doesn’t seem likely at the moment.
The list has really trimmed down for this month. I really hope that it picks back up as we lead into the fall. That being said, 2016 has been a pretty good year for credit card sign up bonuses, so we were due for a break month. I expect that things will pick back up in the fall, as companies will want to close out the year strong.
It has been a few months since I last updated this list. The reason is because there was no significant shift in the industry until now.
I decided to change up my classifications a little bit. I’ve split up the credit card companies into 4 groupings:
CIBC is offering something called the Air Canada AConversion Visa Prepaid Card. A prepaid card is a card where you can use your credit card to pre-load the card with a specific amount of funds to be used at a later date. You can use this like a credit card (wherever accepted). The main difference between is that instead of a credit limit, where you use the limit first, and then pay off the balance when it is due, you have to preload the card with money, and you can only use what is loaded into the card. There is no credit limit.