The Keeper Card series makes the case for why specific cards deserve an ongoing spot in your wallet despite any annual fees or alternative options. As always I'm writing for a Canadian market, and at times targetting professionals who may have business expenses and need additional cards in that context.
What Makes a Keeper - Unique Features
The credit card landscape is broad, even here in Canada, but many of the cards offer broadly similar features. Cash back or points and insurance make up the bulk of their kit. But some cards have unique features that provide potential for ongoing value sufficient to justify the keeper card status.
This category relies on no fee or low fee cards because the unique benefits may be niche.
No Fee Bill Payment
It's pretty widely known that many utility and tax payments do not accept credit card, or if they do it's with a 2.5% fee that often offsets the earn rate in the card used. While you might accept a 2.5% fee for a 2.5% reward if it moves you closer to a sub, the net 0% reward is less than ideal.
Enter the Canadian Tire World Elite MasterCard. This is a no annual fee product that has one main unique benefit and a couple potential "nice to haves". The standout feature is that you can set up scheduled bill payments similar to your bank account for things like utilities and property taxes with no fee and obtain the 1% back in Canadian Tire money. Sure it's not much, and maybe CT money has little appeal to you, but this is definitely a one of a kind option that is worth considering. If CT money doesn't appeal to you, check out Chexy, a service that lets you pay all sorts of different bills at 1.75% fee, low enough to consider if you have a premium card.
It's also worth noting that CT money is accepted at other brands under the same ownership, Atmosphere, Sport Chek and others.
Other card perks include Canadian Tire's version of a CAA membership in either gold member or gold vehicle flavour (ie. Cover one person in any vehicle of cover one vehicle with any person) with a retail value of over $100.
It also comes in the mail with some coupons including one for a conventional oil change or money towards a synthetic one as well as some for car washes etc.
Also, as a world Elite MasterCard, it comes with Boingo Wifi hotspot access.
These features aren't unique and may be if questionable value, but again this is a no fee card with a one of a kind ability to slowly earn back on a typically hard to harness spend category.
General Use
Like most unique use cards there isn't much to say for their general use, but you could use the CT MC WE at Canadian Tire when going there to redeem your passively accumulated rewards
So how does the bill payment work?
Sign into CTFS and at the top of the page you should find a link for payments
On the left, under Pay Bills select Manage Payees and then Add Payee.
Search for your payee and set it up with your account number as you normally would with a bank. I added my electricity, water and gas, and my property taxes. If you want to check if your municipality is included you can look at this community spreadsheet but I can't verify that it is up to date or accurate.
Now you can either manually make a payment, or schedule a recurring one. Unfortunately unlike conventional auto-payment where they debit your bank for the exact amount owing, this requires you to manually enter an amount. Unless you're on a fixed utility bill structure this might concern you that you will have to sign in and manually input each payment just for a couple of dollars in Canadian Tire money. Fortunately there is a way around this! Simply leave your current auto debiting auto-pay connected to your bank account, and then on the CT MC schedule an estimated recurring payment to land several days before the typical payment.
For example if your electricity bill is usually between $100-$130, you could schedule the card to pay $100 monthly, and the $0-30 difference would come from your bank's auto-payment. Sure this would only earn you $12 per year in CT money, but it is set and forget and can scale up depending on your utility bills... And I don't know about you, but I spend a lot more than $100 on utilities a month!
A bigger source of earning if you're a property owner is going to be property taxes. Depending where you live this could easily add $50 or $100 to your CT money collection with minimal effort. Depending on how it is collected throughout the year this may be a single transaction you place in the portal.
Conclusion
While it definitely won't be your biggest earner the CT WE MC may still earn a place in your collection (even if not in your wallet) for its unique ability to earn a return on traditionally difficult to monetize spend. If the goal of maximizing your credit cards is to squeeze every cent of return on your spend, this will transform another category from 0% return to 1% all without an annual fee, and with a couple small additional benefits.
Referral links
There is no referral link for the Canadian Tire Mastercard, but you can apply here:
https://triangle.canadiantire.ca/en/credit-cards/triangle-world-elite-mastercard.html
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If you're on the fence, or wondering about other cards reach out to me for a free consult, and if you sign up for a card through my link, let me know and I will walk you through advanced tricks and personalized advice to help you get the maximum benefit both from earning and redeeming points - getting your travel journey going faster than you ever thought possible.
Disclaimer
These posts are all made in good intentions and are to the best of my ability accurate at the time of writing. That said, the official terms and conditions and current sign up bonuses should be verified and interpreted in the context of your personal financial situation.
