There use to be a Canadian credit card called Chargex, it was launched in 1968 by TD, RBC and a few other big banks. It was acquired by Visa and today the only game in town is either Visa or MasterCard as other commenters have said.

Some history about chargex: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/click-click-how-the-people-s-credit-card-was-launched/article_45b4e25d-f8fa-5dd6-878f-13c94b639729.html

I think you’ll find that many store cards are really Visa or Mastercard.

Many Canadian store cards used to be owned by the stores. Some of the department store ones were very profitable.

However, many firms ‘rationalized’ by getting out of what was seen as a financial services business line to focus on their core retail. Weston’s with PC Financial is an exception - but for many consumers there are other reasons not to go with Loblaws/PC branded financial products.

They’re just other cards in disguise.

Some of them are owned by Citibank, which makes them not Visa or Mastercard, but Citibank is still American owned. The other issue is that many stores in Canada are still owned by Americans or American companies.

Almost all store cards are Visa or Mastercard branded as they rely on those payment processors to handle payments and for their security mechanisms

Only alternatives to CCs would be your debit card or money I guess.

Until we get a CBDC, Visa and MasterCard would remain our only access to the digital payment system, outside of the use cases that take Interac. Unfortunately in Canada it’s likely that CBDC would still necessitate accounts in commercial banks. Ideally we’d want Bank of Canada to provode any Canadian citizen with a simple chequing account that they can use to transact with any other Canadian citizen or business via CBDC, with zero transaction fees. I doubt the Big Five are gonna let that happen without getting themselves to skim something off the top.

I recently asked this as well. I have a line of credit/Visa through my bank and an AMEX card. No balance on AMEX, small balance on Visa.

At this moment, there doesn’t seem to be a true 100% Canadian credit card to compare/compete with the big US cards (ie Visa, MC, AMEX). Think of the HUGE amount of $$$ the US collects from us in interest/annual fees. Is this $$$ even considered in the “trade imbalance” between 🇨🇦 and 🇺🇲?

It’s pretty difficult for most of us to get by in the modern world without having access to a CC. I don’t know if you can even book a hotel room or rent a car without one. For online shopping, usually the only options for payment I’ve seen are CC or PAYPAL. There used to be an option for Interac but it doesn’t seem to be as common antmore. We could opt for no-fee cards and pay the balance off every month, but I know not everyone can afford to do that. Some are living hand to mouth and buying groceries with their CC.

It would be amazing if we 🇨🇦 had our own CC. I’d switch in a heartbeat.

We need Interac, Wero and JCB credit cards in Canada now!