The MBNA Rewards World Elite® Mastercard® is one of only three cards classified as a points earning machine with everyday earn rates of up to 5.5 points per dollar. It is considered one of the five best travel rewards cards and ranks as the second best cash back rewards card in Canada.
The review of the MBNA Rewards World Elite Mastercard is broken down into the following sections:
Overview
The MBNA Rewards World Elite® Mastercard® is one of only three cards in Canada that Rewards Canada considers to be a true points earning machine. It has very strong earn rates in popular everyday spending categories and if you are redeeming for travel or select gift cards the base earn rate stays competitive with other cards. It has a fairly flexible travel redemption including no requirement to have the full amount of points towards a travel purchase, it also has cash back redemption options and also one of, if not, the best redemption rates for gift cards.
Costs & Sign up Features
The MBNA Rewards World Elite® Mastercard® is one of the few remaining premium cards charging an annual fee of only $120. Many of this card's competitors have been bumping that fee up into the range of $139 to $150. For additional/supplementary cards you are looking at $50 per year for the first card and $0 for any more cards after that.
Right now the MBNA Rewards World Elite® Mastercard® has a welcome bonus offering up to 30,000 MBNA Rewards points. The 30,000 point bonus is broken down as follows:
- 20,000 bonus points†† (approximately $165 in cash back value) after you make $2,000 or more in eligible purchases within the first 90 days of your account opening.
- 10,000 bonus points†† (approximately $80 in cash back value) once enrolled for paperless e-statements within the first 90 days of account opening.
This is one of the easier or more achievable welcome bonus offers in the market as reaching $2,000 in spend over the course of three months should be no problem for those who can get this card. The additional 10,000 points is super easy - a couple of clicks in your account to enroll for paperless e-statements and those points are yours. You really should do that on day one of having the card!
The interest rate on the card is 21.99% on purchases. 22.99% on cash advances and 22.99% on balance transfers.
Like all World Elite Mastercards in Canada the minimum annual income requirements are $80,000 personal or $150,000 household.
Earning
The card earns MBNA Rewards points as follows:
- 5 points‡ for every $1 spent on eligible restaurant, grocery, digital media, membership, and household utility purchases until $50,000 is spent annually in the applicable category* (that is $50,000 per category)
- 1 point‡ for every $1 on all other eligible purchases.
On top of this the card features Birthday Bonus Points‡ that are equal to 10% of the total number of Points the Account earned in the 12 months before the month of your birthday, up to a maximum of 15,000 Points. That essentially makes your 5 points per dollar worth 5.5 points and the 1 point worth 1.1 points.
Point Valuation Chart
| Spending Category | Points earned per dollar spent | Rate of return when booking travel with MBNA Rewards | Rate of return Cash Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurant, grocery, digital media, membership, and household utility | 5 | 5% | 4.15% |
| All other spending | 1 | 1% | 0.83% |
With the birthday bonus:
| Spending Category | Points earned per dollar spent | Rate of return when booking travel with MBNA Rewards | Rate of return Cash Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurant, grocery, digital media, membership, and household utility | 5.5 | 5.5% | ~4.57% |
| All other spending | 1.1 | 1.1% | 0.88% |
Redeeming
There are multiple redemption options in the MBNA Rewards program and like most proprietary credit card programs these include travel, cash back, merchandise, gift cards and more. The big difference in MBNA is the value they give for gift cards - they are actually some of the best redemptions in the program and some will actually provide a rate of return similar to travel and better than cash back!
Travel
Redeeming for travel is extremely straightforward with the MBNA Rewards program. To get the best value out of your points for travel redemptions you must book your travel via MBNA which operates as its own travel agency. Basically you book travel through them as if you were booking travel anywhere else and then you redeem points against the charge during the payment process for your travel. You can choose to redeem any amount of points against the charge so it makes it quite flexible. The redemption rate published by MBNA is 10,000 points = $100 however you can choose to redeem less than that or more than that.
For example, if you are purchasing $1,200 in flights and have 45,000 points you can redeem those points and end up only paying $750 out of pocket for those flights. If you have 120,000 points (or more) you could redeem that exact amount so those flights are free!
With that 10,000 points to $100 ratio you are earning a 1% to 5.5% return for your spending on this card (see the point valuation chart above).
Cash back
Back in the day this card's travel and cash back redemption rate were one in the same but that changed about 4 or 5 years ago when MBNA dropped the cash back value from being the same as travel at 100 points to $1 to 120 points for $1. This redemption comes in the form of a statement credit or you can even choose to have MBNA direct deposit the funds to your chequing or savings account or send you a cheque - a feature that is rarely seen from proprietary reward programs. Most of the others only provide a statement credit or if they do have the true cash back option it is only for those that hold bank accounts with the same bank as the card issuer.
At 120 points to $1 ratio you are earning a 0.83% to ~4.57% return for your spending on this card if you choose the cash back option. (see the point valuation chart above). Depending on your spending habits the over 4% cash back makes the MBNA Rewards World Elite Mastercard one of the best cash back cards in Canada.
e-Gift Cards
Unlike many of the competing programs where you lose even more value for your points when redeeming for non-travel or non-cash back options there is one category outside of those where MBNA does shine and that is for gift cards. More specifically, e-Gift cards, that is, the ones that are delivered to you electronically via email and are not a physical gift card. Depending on which e-Gift cards you redeem your points for you may actually get a rate of return that equals the what you get on travel and will almost always get a better return than the cash back option. The MBNA Rewards catalog has a lot of e-Gift Card options from Amazon to Starbucks to Uber and more ranging from $25 to $200 in value.
The rest of the redemption options from MBNA include physical gift cards which lose some value over the e-gift cards as they account for having to mail the cards out and then there is merchandise. Merchandise values come in below or even sometimes above the 1 cent per point found on travel redemptions.
Features and Benefits
MBNA does not provide any additional benefits seen on some other cards like annual travel credits and annual airport lounge visits however since it is a World Elite Mastercard it does come with the standard benefits provided to all these cards.
World Elite Mastercard benefits
- Mastercard Travel Pass provided by DragonPass Complimentary membership to Mastercard Travel Pass provided by DragonPass gives access to over 1,300 airport lounges worldwide at discounted rate of $32 USD per person per visit
- FlexiRoam Global Data Roaming Stay connected around the world without a SIM card and get up to 15% off a Global Data Roaming plan plus up to 3GB of data, free.
- Fubo Discount Access 50+ live-stream sports channels and save $30 on your first three months of Fubo
- H&R Block Discount Save up to 30% when you pay for your tax preparation services using your eligible Mastercard
- Booking.com Discount Up to 7% off prepaid stays and save as you explore
Insurance
The MBNA Rewards World Elite Mastercard comes with a good insurance package that isn't best in class but not worst either. The insurance coverage includes the following:
- Out of Province/Country Emergency Medical Insurance - 21 days (under age 65)
- Flight Delay Insurance: 4 hours up to $500 per person
- Car Rental Theft and Damage Insurance: 31 Days up to C$65,000 MSRP
- Delayed Baggage Insurance: 4 hours up to $1,000 per person
- Lost / Stolen Baggage Insurance: up to $1,000 per person
- Hotel/Motel Burglary Insurance: Up to $1,000
- $1,000,000 Travel Accident Insurance
- Purchase Protection Insurance: 90 days
- Extended Warranty Insurance: Up to 1 extra year
- Mobile Device Insurance: up to $1,000
Price Protection
The MBNA Rewards World Elite Mastercard has one benefit that is not seen very frequently on cards and that is Price Protection. This is where if you buy something on the card and then find the same product advertised at a lower price within 60 days of purchases MBNA will refund you the difference up to a maximum of $500 per item and $1,000 in total claims in a calendar year. There are conditions and exclusions that do apply. Food, drinks, vehicles, computers, phones are some examples of what is excluded.
What is good about this card
The full time earn rate of five points per dollar spend select categories make this card one of the strongest points earning cards in Canada. Add in the birthday bonus and you are receiving a 5.5% return for your spending in those categories. That's actually one of the highest returns in Canada if you don't include cards that allow you to convert points to airline & hotel programs such as Air Canada Aeroplan and Marriott Bonvoy
The high spend limits per category are amazing! Most other card's limit the total across all categories in the neighbourhood of $20,000 to $50,000 whereas the MBAN card provides caps of $50,000 per category!
The excellent redemption value when redeeming for certain e-gift cards!
The ease of earning the sign up bonus is another strong point, the 30,000 points for only $2,000 in spending and signing up for paperless e-statements? Easy peesy!
The Price Protection benefit. There are very few cards in Canada that feature this money saving option.
What is not so good about this card
When it comes to travel redemptions, this card is a little less flexible than other cards including the two other true 5x points cards. Those other cards allow you to book travel with whomever you want and still get the full value of your points when you redeem against the charge. This lets the holders of those cards shop around for the best deals in travel. Technically you can do same with this card but then it becomes a cash back redemption and not a travel redemption so you would lose some value. An example of this buying tickets to take the train from Tokyo to Nagasaki when you are already in Japan on vacation - with other cards you can just buy the tickets and then redeem points against that charge when you get home from vacation and still get the full value of your points whereas with the MBNA card you will not.
The 1x base points earn rate, while not the lowest in the market and equal to most other card's base earn rate actually ends up being lower than some others since those other cards have mid-level accelerators on other categories (for example 2x points on gas and transit for example)
If you make a lot of purchases outside of the 5x points categories you might be better off with cards that have returns that are higher than 1%. Some examples are the Rogers Red World Elite Mastercard but do be sure you do your math and average out what you think you would earn between the 5x points and 1x points spend as you may still come out ahead of those other cards.
No extra benefits. Some of this card's competition provide some extra value with benefits like annual travel credits, airport lounge visit passes, NEXUS credits and more. You won't find anything like those on this card.
Who should get this card?
- Consumers who spend a lot, well not even a lot, but just want to earn the most points possible on their Restaurant, grocery, digital media, membership, and household utility purchases
- Consumer who want to make sure they are getting the highest possible return on select category spending
- Consumers who want to supplement their high earning American Express cards with high earning Mastercard
- Consumers who are OK to redeem for travel via a single travel agency to get the most value out of their points
- Consumers who shop a lot at the high value e-gift card options that MBNA Rewards provides (IE a Banana Republic fanatic!)
Conclusion
Ever since the American Express Cobalt Card was introduced back in 2017, other cards in Canada have been inching their way up to offering higher category earn rates and the MBNA Rewards World Elite Mastercard is no exception. It became the third true 5x points earning card in Canada and actually trumps the first two in terms of annual spending caps! If you are like many Canadians who don't need the option to convert points to an airline or hotel program and are totally fine in making your travel bookings with MBNA Rewards, then there is absolutely no reason why this card should not be in your wallet!
If you are wondering what we mean by true 5x points, please read this loyalty lesson of ours: When earning 5x points isn't the same as earning 5x points - a loyalty lesson
Latest card details:
MBNA Rewards World Elite® Mastercard®
Earn up to 30,000 MBNA Rewards Points†
20,000 bonus points†† (approximately $165 in cash back value) after you make $2,000 or more in eligible purchases within the first 90 days of your account opening.
10,000 bonus points†† (approximately $80 in cash back value) once enrolled for paperless e-statements within the first 90 days of account opening.
$120 annual fee. $50 Additional Card Annual Fee for one authorized user (if you have one).
- Earn 5 points‡ for every $1 spent on eligible restaurant, grocery, digital media, membership, and household utility purchases until $50,000 is spent annually in the applicable category. 1 point‡ for every $1 on all other eligible purchases.
- Each year, you will receive Birthday Bonus Points‡ equal to 10% of the total number of Points the Account earned in the 12 months before the month of your birthday, to a maximum Birthday Bonus each year of 15,000 Points.
- Redeem points‡ for cash back, brand-name merchandise, gift cards from participating retailers, charitable donations, and travel.
- Standard Annual Interest Rates of 19.99% on purchases, 22.99% on balance transfers✪, and 24.99% on cash advances.
- Important Notice: Effective from the first day of your statement period beginning September 2025 and reflected on your October 2025 statement
Standard Annual Interest Rates of 21.99% on eligible purchases, 22.99% on balance transfers✪, and 22.99% on cash advances - Mobile Device Insurance***
With Mobile Device Insurance, you’ve got up to $1,000 in coverage for eligible mobile devices in the event of loss, theft, accidental damage or mechanical breakdown.
- $120 annual fee. $50 Additional Card Annual Fee for one authorized user (if you have one).
- To qualify, your personal annual income must be greater than $80,000, or your household annual income must be $150,000 or greater.††††
- This offer is not available for residents of Quebec. For residents of Quebec, please click here.
- Click here to apply for the MBNA Rewards World Elite® Mastercard®
††, ‡, ✪, ***, ††††, Terms and Conditions apply.
This offer is not available for residents of Quebec. For residents of Quebec, please click here.
Sponsored advertising. MBNA is a division of The Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) and TD is not responsible for the contents of this site including any editorials or reviews that may appear on this site. For complete information on this MBNA credit card, please click on the “Apply Now” button.
The Toronto-Dominion Bank is the issuer of this credit card. MBNA is a division of The Toronto-Dominion Bank. ®MBNA and other-trademarks are the property of The Toronto-Dominion Bank..
Other cards to consider if you are looking at this card:
- American Express Cobalt Card
- BMO eclipse Visa Infinite Card
- CIBC Aventura Visa Infinite Card
- National Bank of Canada World Elite Mastercard
- Scotiabank Gold American Express Card
- Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite card
- TD First Class Visa Infinite Card
About the author
Patrick Sojka
Patrick is one of Canada's foremost leading experts on loyalty programs and credit cards. Having founded Rewards Canada in 2001 he brings nearly 24 years of experience to the forefront of helping Canadians make the most of their rewards. He has also provided consulting to credit card companies, airlines, hotels and is regularly featured in the media for his expertise on loyalty programs and credit cards.
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This review was First posted on March 26, 2016 and is updated on a regular basis