How to Waive Chequing Account Fees in Canada

1How do chequing account fee waivers work?

The FCAC’s Account Comparison Tool lists the features and fees of most Canadian accounts, which is a useful cross-check on any single bank’s page.

The trade-off is not the fee — it is what the waiver requires of you. A balance requirement ties up money; a payroll requirement ties you to direct deposit with that bank.

2Is waiving the fee worth more than the interest I would earn?

The comparison holds while you would otherwise keep that balance in a savings account at around 2.80%. It stops holding if the requirement forces you to borrow, or to leave an emergency fund so thin that an unexpected expense goes on a credit card at 20% interest.

The balance has to stay in the account. Dropping below the minimum for part of a month usually cancels the waiver for that month, so the arithmetic assumes it can sit untouched.

3Which chequing accounts charge no monthly fee?

No monthly fee does not mean no cost: per-transaction charges, ATM fees and fees for extras such as drafts or transfers vary by account, so check the fee schedule for the features you use.

Some accounts pay a welcome bonus instead. First-year value below is the bonus minus twelve months of fees, which is why a free account with a bonus can rank above a fee account with a larger bonus.

4Do premium chequing plans justify their fee?

Those extras only count if you would otherwise pay for them. Our first-year value column counts the welcome bonus and the monthly fees, not the value of unused bundled services.

Where a premium plan also waives or rebates a credit card’s annual fee, count that rebate once — against the card fee — rather than treating it as free money on both products.

5How do I compare chequing accounts properly?

Our chequing comparison ranks accounts by first-year value with the fee waiver applied. Enter whether you can keep the minimum balance and the ranking changes, because the waiver is the largest single factor in the total.