After a one year hiatus the famous Rewards Canada Credit Card Comparison Charts are back and better than ever!
The charts have been updated and relaunched for 2023 with even more detail and features. Readers are now able to select which cards they would like to compare, whether it be 2, 4, or 60+ cards! You’ll find these to be the most detailed yet very easy to use side by side comparisons of Canadian credit cards.
The charts launched today with consumer travel rewards credit cards with cash back and small business cards to be added over the coming weeks.
Click here to see the comparison charts!
The History of Rewards Canada’s charts
The Rewards Canada charts have quite a storied history! The first chart that you see above was launched on September 17, 2004. Only nine columns covering a total of 13 cards. Wow, those were the days! No Infinite Cards, no World Elite Cards – Gold and Platinum were the ones at the top! And those welcome bonuses and earn rates? They were literally nothing compared to today’s offerings.
Further down the chart in the insurance section we didn’t see emergency medical coverage, trip cancellation or trip interruption insurance as those weren’t offered back then! They all came later once issuers began revamping their offerings.
The chart gains notoriety
One part of the storied history saw the chart copied without permission around 2005 or 2006! I happened to pick up a copy of the Financial Post magazine in the foyer of my work at that time (I wasn’t running Rewards Canada full time yet) and to my surprise there is the Rewards Canada chart in the middle of a special feature on credit card rewards that was sponsored by CIBC.
I made a few phone calls to the Financial Post to inquire about the unauthorized use of the chart and eventually spoke to the person in charge of that feature. At first the staffer who created that part of the feature didn’t admit to copying it but eventually they did say they “referenced” our chart. Fearing a possible lawsuit the Financial Post made good with us and the good news to come out of this? They hired Rewards Canada to create the chart for them every year for a good five or so years after that while the magazine was still in print.
Additional Charts
As more credit cards emerged in our market and trying to cover all the cards in the above chart it became quite large. I decided to split the charts into specific categories like airline, hotel (yes, we had enough hotel cards at one point to have a comparison chart) travel points, cash back and more but also kept one chart with all the cards on it.
Discontinuation of the Charts
The charts for the most part kept the same format with additional rows for new details like expanded insurance coverage, price protection, annual credits and so on. However with our old website (Mark IV 2012-2021) it proved somewhat difficult to keep up the charts as much as I would have liked to so I made the decision to pull them off the site early in 2022. A lot of my focus then went into revamping the websites to what they are today and I have now finally been able to allot some time to bringing those charts back!
The Charts Return in 2023!
And now as of April 19, 2023 I am happy to announce the re-launch of the charts (well, most of them) and they are better than ever! They are much easier to read as the table scrolls much better on the screen now, the headers stay in place and my favourite part which I think will become the favourite feature for most of our readers is being able to select which cards to compare!
You can compare 2 cards, 5 cards, or all 60+ cards on the current charts! It’s up to you. For example you can select the card you may currently have and then compare it against as many cards as you like to see if there may be a better card for you!
Wrapping it up
The next step will be to finish the Cash Back and Small Business card charts which I hope to have complete by the middle of May 2023. Then hopefully with all of your feedback and comments I can make tweaks to charts to make them even better. So please feel free to send me a message with any comments, feedback, concerns or corrections that need to be made to the charts.
And with that said click here to check out Rewards Canada’s Credit Comparison Charts