Top Credit Cards to use at Restaurants (updated January 14, 2017)
Exactly a month away from Valentine’s Day, which means you have plenty of time to find the right credit card when you pay that restaurant bill to optimize your rewards on that day. This list is due for an update anyway.
I have classified the credit cards in different categories and listed them in ascending order of annual fees. Each option that I listed below is worth at least 3% return or more.
Cash Back Credit Cards
American Express SimplyCash Card
- No annual fee
- Earn 5% cash back on restaurants purchases (up to $250 cash back or a maximum of $5,000 in purchases) for the first 6 months
- Earn 1.25% cash back on all other purchases and thereafter
Tangerine Money-Back MasterCard
- No annual fee
- Earn 4% cash back on a select group of categories (select “eating places”) (for the first 3 months)
American Express SimplyCash Preferred Card
- $79 annual fee
- Earn 5% cash back on all purchases for the first 6 months (up to $400 cash back or $8,000 on purchases)
Fixed Rewards Credit Cards
Capital One Platinum MasterCard
- No annual fee
- Exclusive to Costco members
- Earn 3% cash back on restaurant purchases
Scotiabank Gold American Express Card
- $99 annual fee
- $29 for additional cardholders
- Earn 4 points for every $1 you spent on dining
Scotiabank Platinum American Express Card
- $399 annual fee
- $99 for supplementary cardholders
- Earn 30,000 bonus points with your first card purchase
- Earn 4 points for every $1 you spent on dining
Co-branded Credit Cards
CIBC Aerogold Infinite Visa Card
- $120 annual fee
- Earn 15,000 sign up bonus points after the first purchase
- Earn 3 points for every $1 spent at participating CIBC Bonus Rewards restaurants
CIBC Aerogold Visa Infinite Privilege
- $399 annual fee
- $99 annual fee for a supplementary cardholder
- Earn 3.75 Aeroplan miles for every $1 spent at CIBC Bonus Rewards restaurants
Also the Chase Marriott Visa gives 2 points at restaurants.
Surprisingly AMEX Gold does not.
So if you are travelling you get 2 points from AE Gold for the flights, hotel and car rental but you need another card to use for restaurants to get 2 points.
Chase Marriott points have only value of about 0.7cents so even *2 I wouldn’t use it in Canada. However out of country, adding the 2.5% savings it seems like an easy pick, so not sure why Pointshogger disagrees
Ah yes, good points by both of you. I never factored in restaurant purchases outside of Canada. Which means Rogers Platinum and Chase Amazon should also be factored in or even the ACCONVERSION card. I will take these factors into consideration in a future updated post! Thanks.
Capital One Aspire Travel World Elite Mastercard gives two percent on everything, including restaurants.
It’s a fixed rewards card. But not as good as the 4-5% promotional offers.