Best Bank Accounts

gary27

I have found this comparsion site for banks in Canada where you can see the fees of all the banks and which ones offer free banking and in some cases the monthly fee can be waived if you maintain a minimum balance.

http://www.ratesupermarket.ca/bank_accounts/

If other people can comment on this who are currently in canada which type of account they have or who is the best to bank with or any other general advice about banking in canada which can be of great help to people who are looking to move to canada.

COYVB

President's Choice offers no fee banking. Myself and the wife set a joint account up with them recently, seems much better than TD

gary27

COYVB wrote: »

President's Choice offers no fee banking. Myself and the wife set a joint account up with them recently, seems much better than TD

thanks for the advice.

Theimprover

Anyone else give any advice on which bank ect.

fergusb

I signed up with ScotiaBank in Vancouver, free banking for a year, and you also earn points which can get free cinema tickets which is a nice perk.

They also have ATM's in every 7-Eleven so there's one on almost every corner!

montreal2011

I think the best way to operate is to have two accounts.

One with one of the big banks, such as TD, Scotia, etc. mostly so you can get a credit card. Another with ING which give unlimited merchant debit purchases, free atm at National Bank, and the BEST interest rates on checking, savings and mortgages.

With you other bank account, get the plan with the lowest minimum balance to have the cheapest or no monthly charge. Use your ING debit card for all merchant debit purchases, and either card to offer yourself more options for free atm withdrawals.

If you find yourself paying extra to have more debit transactions per month, or are exceeding your limit and getting extra charges per transaction, stop! Just open an ING account! They will even give you $25 to do so!

WillPainter

Are there any banks that offer a visa debit card like AIB?

What is the name they use to 'pay by laser' in shops? I see the word Interac purchase being mentioned, this the same thing?

retalivity

WillPainter wrote: »

Are there any banks that offer a visa debit card like AIB?

What is the name they use to 'pay by laser' in shops? I see the word Interac purchase being mentioned, this the same thing?

pretty much

tlambe

I'm with Scotiabank (the new immigrant/no fees account with them is called the "StartRight Program").

They sent me a referral URL recently that credits $50 to anyone who starts a new account with them before 28 February 2014 (as well as another $50 to me).

If anyone would like the referral URL, send me a message!

Kev_2012

I joined with Van City when I arrived in June and closed it straight away because it's actually a credit union and transferring money over is inordinately complicated.

I opened a TD Infinity account because they had a deal whereby you get a free Samsung Tab 3 tablet, the account being $14.95 for unlimited banking (well you still pay the fees for withdrawing from non-TD ATMs). I sold the tablet for $140, so effectively giving me free banking for a year.

I find TD pretty good, they open late (8pm on thurs/fri) and are open on Saturdays, but if I was opening one again I'd probably go with Scotiabank. You get stuff like free cinema tickets every so often and as said above they seem to have promos on the whole time.

NewsMeQuick

The ScotiaBank StartRight programme with the Scotia One bank account for landed immigrants is here: http://www.scotiabank.com/ca/en/0,,4355,00.html

againstthetide

Might be a tricky one to get with no Job.
States it needs a letter from your employer

bopper

COYVB wrote: »

President's Choice offers no fee banking. Myself and the wife set a joint account up with them recently, seems much better than TD

If you need to wire money from home I would not recommend these. I tried three times and every time my money got rejected. Also, every staff member I dealt with didn't seem to have a clue how to help me, and I went to three different branches.

Scotiabank offer no fees for your first year with them and I find them ten times easier to deal with than PC. Plus you get points every time you use your card for a purchase and they go towards free movies.

ash2008

Coast Capital - they are a credit union, so no fees. I never have problems wiring money home with them either (although you do have to go into the branch to do it).
I really like their internet banking site too.

NewsMeQuick

I'm using that bank account comparisson site that the person at the start kindly gave, I notice that that 'free' Scotia One account has a monthly rate? That can't be the free banking account that they advertise to attract immigrants.

There are a few free ones, that's good. :rolleyes: The next thing is finding one with sufficient ATMs all around the city. What do they call ATMs does anyone know? You generally get charged for using a non-home bank ATM right?

fergusb

The 'free' Scotia account definitely is free. So maybe not appearing on the comparison site.

They call ATM's, ABM's here. And you do get fleeced if you use other banks. Your own bank charges you a penalty and the owner of the ABM charges you, so can be $4 or so. One good thing about Scotia is they have ABMs in every 7-11, which are on most street corners. That said most people use Debit over here. I usually don't carry much cash on me and pay everything on Debit. Even a cup of coffee for a few $ I put onto card.

NewsMeQuick

Thanks very much for that, I'll remember that.

Yeah, the next thing I was wondering was which banks have ABMs commonplace enough so you don't have to worry. Scotia have that covered then. Their online banking is OK, easy enough and has enough features?

fergusb

Yeah, Scotia online is grand. I assume its the same as the others, can do what you need, pay bills etc etc. They do have a feature where they will email you if your balance gets below a certain amount which is handy if you want it.

One cool thing which more or less all banks have over here is e-transact (??) where you can transfer money to anyone using their email address. Think it costs a dollar, but really handy if you need to transfer money to a friend or something like that.

One thing I couldn't figure out how to do was to transfer money to another bank by account number. I wanted to transfer some money to Ireland using CurrencyFair but they wouldn't allow it online. I could do it in branch but was going to cost something like $20 which is mad. Never got that sorted so if its something you plan to do regularly might have to look around. I think its something which isn't offered by banks over here normally for some reason.

dealhunter1985

Hi Fergusb,
With respect to transferring money to Currencyfair, I too had the same issue. As they use a foreign bank (BAML), you have to do a 'wire' which is pricey.
Apparently an alternative that works is that you can send the money to Currencyfair from an INGDirect account. INGDirect have no fees as far as I know, so may be worth looking into if you are going to be doing it regularly.
Looking online, it seems pretty straight forward to setup an account with them aswell.

fergusb wrote: »

Yeah, Scotia online is grand. I assume its the same as the others, can do what you need, pay bills etc etc. They do have a feature where they will email you if your balance gets below a certain amount which is handy if you want it.

One cool thing which more or less all banks have over here is e-transact (??) where you can transfer money to anyone using their email address. Think it costs a dollar, but really handy if you need to transfer money to a friend or something like that.

One thing I couldn't figure out how to do was to transfer money to another bank by account number. I wanted to transfer some money to Ireland using CurrencyFair but they wouldn't allow it online. I could do it in branch but was going to cost something like $20 which is mad. Never got that sorted so if its something you plan to do regularly might have to look around. I think its something which isn't offered by banks over here normally for some reason.

NewsMeQuick

Oh ooo. I was planning on using CurrencyFair. I would like to receive the money exchanged in Ireland, so set up a Canadian account in person, conect the two online and draw down the converted CAD. Has anyone had trouble with that part?

dealhunter1985

NewsMeQuick wrote: »

Oh ooo. I was planning on using CurrencyFair. I would like to receive the money exchanged in Ireland, so set up a Canadian account in person, conect the two online and draw down the converted CAD. Has anyone had trouble with that part?

Converting EUR to CAD with Currencyfair is very simple.
You lodge the euros from your Irish account to their Irish euro account.
It will take about 2 days for the funds to hit your Currencyfair account.
Then you do the trade and withdraw the CAD to your Canadian bank account. Currency fair charge something like 4 dollars for the withdrawal of the CAD and it takes about 2-3 days to hit your account.

fergusb

Thanks for the tip, I was talking to CurrencyFair about options and they suggested ING Direct but hadn't actually got around to looking into it. I assume I can transfer money to ING Direct by email, and then easily to CurrencyFair from then.