I’m planning to open a new chequing account in the near future, and I’m contemplating bailing on RBC. I’ve been with them for a very long time, and one possible outcome is that I’ll just open a new RBC account and be done with it. That’d be… fine.

But for a variety of reasons (including my satisfaction with RBC trending steadily downward), I’m thinking about opening this new account elsewhere. I don’t have a ton of hard requirements, and I’m not really sure what to look for in a bank, but the following would be nice:

  • Good online banking experience, particularly desktop (RBC is shockingly bad at this)
  • Good credit card; easy to make payments from the new account
  • Minimal fees
  • Easy e-transfers
  • Real security (another thing RBC is terrible at)
  • Neat rewards would be cool
  • Low-fee, low-friction investing would also be cool-- I don’t really do much investing, but I’d like to be able to

Any suggestions would be great, including anti-suggestions if you happen to know of a bank that I should avoid.

  • cheerytext1981
    4·
    8 months ago

    Wealthsimple Cash covers most of what one might be looking for in a chequing account.

    • 4.5% interest if you deposit your paycheque into it. 3% otherwise I think? It’s quite high
    • you can send e-transfers from a Cash account, or you send money using WS Cash to other Cash users. Both workflows are easy

    The Cash card also has 0.5% cash back on purchases IIRC and is essentially a prepaid credit card / debit card. I love WS Cash, the only reason I don’t use it more often is that I have an Amex.

    • deege
      4·
      8 months ago

      4% before any direct deposit bonuses.

      It’s pretty decent for a cash / emergency / short term savings account.

      It lacks features though (recurring transfers in/out from other institutions is the main one for me).

    • thanks_shakey_snakeOP
      2·
      8 months ago

      That’s a pretty good deal actually. I wouldn’t have thought to look there, but now I’m going to.