The Ultimate Cash Back Credit Card Portfolio

In this feature of Rewards Canada's Ultimate Credit Card Portfolios we look at the ultimate one for earning cash back rewards! The portfolio primarily focuses on credit cards that provide excellent cash back earn rates but the cards featured within also provide some extra benefits and insurance coverage.

As is typically recommended by Rewards Canada, you should, at a minimum, carry at least one Visa, one Mastercard and one American Express card in your wallet. This is standard with all of our Ultimate Wallets. The reason why is that there are benefits, promotions and earning potential unique to each brand of credit card.

Not only can you make the most of the brands but by having more than one credit card you are protecting yourself if one or more get lost, stolen or blocked due to fraudulent transactions.

Ultimately there are various card options and combinations that could be utilized for this portfolio but we look at one card from each issuing family that we feel are the best fit for this cash back mission.

What is Rewards Canada's Ultimate Cash Back Credit Card Portfolio? It's the following three cards:

Why these three?

A quick overview as to why these three cards make up this portfolio:

• SimplyCash® Preferred Card from American Express: This is the best overall cash back credit card in Canada with a great base earn rate of 2% cash back and accelerated earn rates of 4% for grocery and gas purchases.
• Rogers Red World Elite® Mastercard®: This is the card to use at Costco and with a minimum 1.5% cash back earn rate, it is the card you'll use when a merchant doesn't accept American Express or at places that don't earn accelerated cash back on the CIBC card. You'll also want to use it on US$ purchases where the other cards don't earn 4% cash back.
• CIBC Dividend® Visa Infinite* Card: This is the best cash back Visa card in Canada thanks to 4% cash back earn rates on gas, EV charging and grocery purchases and 2% on transportation, dining purchases and recurring payments.

All three of these cards rank very high in Rewards Canada's Cash Back credit card rankings so it's no wonder they make up the Ultimate Cash Back Credit Card Portfolio. With this portfolio you are pretty much guaranteeing a 1.5% or higher return for all of your credit card spending.

Key Benefits of this portfolio

• Excellent accelerated cash back earn rates
• Excellent base cash back earn rates
• Good insurance coverage
• Some Travel Benefits

 

Why you want to get each of these cards

 

SimplyCash® Preferred Card from American Express

The first card in the portfolio is the SimplyCash® Preferred Card from American Express. Ranked as the number one cash back card in Canada, it has one of the highest base earn rates of 2% cash back (Base earn rate refers to all other spending other than accelerated categories). It then offers an accelerated earn rate of 4% on grocery and gas station purchases.

If the merchant you are shopping at accepts Amex and doesn't fall into the CIBC's 2% or 4% categories this is the card you want to use as you'll earn 2% cash back compared to the other cards' 1.5% or 2%.

Yes this card also earns 2% and 4% on the same categories as the CIBC Dividend Visa Infinite Card but we would recommend using the latter card first. The reason why we recommend this is the CIBC card has on-demand cash back - you can redeem your cash back rewards anytime your balance hits $25. With the SimplyCash Preferred Card the cash is only rewarded once per year.

If you reach $20,000 in total spending on the CIBC card's accelerated categories in less than a calendar year you will then want to use the SimplyCash Preferred card for all those categories as the CIBC card will only earn 1% after the $20,000 cap is reached. The SimplyCash Preferred card also has a $30,000 annual cap but only on grocery purchases.

The SimplyCash Preferred Card also provides quite good travel insurance coverage including flight and baggage delay coverage.

The SimplyCash Preferred Card from American Express Quick Facts:

• Monthly Fee $9.99 primary card ($11.88 annually), $0 for supplementary/additional cards
• Up to $250 welcome bonus
• Income requirement: American Express does not have set income requirements
• Apply for this card here.
• Click here to read our in depth review of The SimplyCash Preferred Card from American Express

Rogers Red World Elite® Mastercard®

The second card in the portfolio is the Rogers Red World Elite® Mastercard® which is ranked as the best no annual fee cash back credit card in Canada. Even though it is issued by Rogers, you don't have to be a Rogers customer to get the card and take advantage of its great earn rates. However, if you are a Rogers/Fido/Shaw customer those great earn rates become even better!

For non-Rogers/Shaw/Fido customers this will be the card you use for those places where Amex is not accepted and where that merchant doesn't fall into the CIBC card's 2% and 4% categories. For these type of purchases you will earn 1.5% cash back compared to 1% on the CIBC card.

This is also the go to card for shopping at Costco Canada warehouses since they only accept Mastercard. Costco purchases will also earn 1.5% cash back.

For Rogers/Shaw/Fido customers, the card will be used for many more purchases as the card's base earn rate jumps to 2% for client and that is further boosted to 3% if the cash back rewards are redeemed towards Rogers/Shaw/Fido purchases (services or products). In this case, for any of the clients who do want to use the cash back for their Rogers et al purchases you want to use the Rogers Red World Elite for all purchases except gas and groceries since the other two cards will earn 4% versus the 3%.

The card also offers 3% cash back on purchases made in US dollars which grows to 4.5% to Rogers clients who redeem that cash back towards Rogers/Shaw/Fido purchases (services or products).

With this card you can cash out anytime your rewards balance reaches $10.

This card also features all the standard World Elite Mastercard benefits including Mastercard TravelPass by DragonPass airport lounge access membership and free global Boingo Wi-Fi. It also comes with 5 Roam Like Home days at no cost every year for Rogers mobile plans (up to $75 value).

The Rogers Red World Elite Mastercard Quick Facts:

• No Annual Fee
• Provides World Elite Mastercard benefits like airport lounge access membership
• Income requirements: $80,000 personal or $150,000 household income
• Apply for this card here.
• Click here to read our in-depth review of the Rogers World Elite Mastercard

CIBC Dividend® Visa Infinite* Card

Rounding out this portfolio is the CIBC Dividend® Visa Infinite* Card which is ranked as the third overall best cash back card in Canada and is considered the best cash back Visa card. It offers three levels of cash back earning with an accelerated earn rate of 4% on grocery, gas station and EV charging purchases. This is followed by 2% cash back on eligible transportation, dining purchases and recurring payments and 1% on all other purchases.

Even thought the SimplyCash Preferred Card has the same earn rates of 2% and 4% we recommend using the CIBC card first for groceries, gas/EV, transportation, dining purchases and recurring payments. As mentioned above the reason why is the easier access to cash back with CIBC. CIBC allows the cardholder to cash out anytime their rewards balance reaches $25 whereas the Amex card only cashes out once per year. We like the idea of having easier and quicker access to your cash back but if you are OK with holding off than it's really a toss as to which card you use to earn 2% and 4%.

The CIBC card does put an overall cap of $20,000 in spending across all the accelerated categories per year. So if and when you hit that amount you'll want to switch over spending to the Amex card.

The CIBC Dividend Visa Infinite Card Quick Facts:

• Annual Fee $120 (waived in the first year with the current welcome bonus offer) $30 supplementary cards
• Get a first-year annual fee rebate and earn a 10% cash back welcome bonus of up to $200 (first 4 statements)!†
• Income requirements: $60,000 personal or $100,000 household income
• Apply for this card here.
• Click here to read our in-depth review of the CIBC Dividend Visa Infinite Card

 

Cash Back Earn rates

You can use this chart to easily compare these card's earn rates to determine which you should use for various purchase categories

 

Earn up to $450 cash back with the welcome bonuses in the first year

Two of these cards do have welcome bonus offers that will increase your point and cash back balances in the first year.

The SimplyCash® Preferred Card from American Express provides a bonus 10% cash back on all purchases for your first 3 months (up to $2,000 in purchases). Plus, earn a $50 statement credit when you make a purchase in month 13. This could add up to $250 in bonus value in your first 13 months.

The CIBC Dividend Visa Infinite Card is currently offering a first-year annual fee rebate and earn a 10% cash back welcome bonus of up to $200 (first 4 statements)!†

There is no welcome bonus offer on the Rogers Red World Elite Mastercard at this time.

Learn more about the cards here:

Other card options you could consider:

You do have several other card options you could look at in this portfolio.

American Express:

On the American Express side of things you could consider the American Express Cobalt Card. We rank it as the second best cash back card in Canada but for some it will actually be the best option! With a 5 points per dollar earn rate on eats and drinks that works out to a 5% cash back equivalent return. That's better than any of the cards in the portfolio and with a minimum redemption of only 1,000 points for a $10 statement credit it has easy access to the cash back. The only factor that keeps the Cobalt Card from being the number one choice in the portfolio is its 1 point per dollar (1% return) base earn rate.

Mastercard:

For the Mastercard slot your next best option is the MBNA Rewards World Elite Mastercard. The card has super strong earn rates - again some of the best in Canada with 5 to 5.5 points per dollar spent on eligible restaurant, grocery, digital media, membership, and household utility purchases. With a statement credit cash back redemption rate of 120 points to $1 the card provides 4.16 to 4.58% cash back returns. Where it is lower is on the base earn rate which at 1 to 1.1 points per dollar spent equates to 0.83% to a 0.92% cash back return.

Visa:

There are quite a lot of options for the Visa side of things. One of the most similar cards to the CIBC Dividend Visa Infinite Card is the venerable Scotia Momentum® Visa Infinite* Card. This card provides 4% on eligible recurring bill payments and grocery store purchases, 2% on eligible gas station and daily transit purchases and 1% cash back on all other eligible everyday purchases. The big difference between the two cards is Scotia not providing on demand cash back rewards, the cash back earned on the Momentum Visa Infinite Card is only paid out once per year.

Wrapping it up

This Ultimate Credit Card Portfolio is the best for those who only want to earn cash back rewards and with these three cards you can strive to earn no less than 1.5% on your card spending. In addition to excellent cash back earning the three cards also provide quite good insurance coverage along with benefits like airport lounge access membership not to mention up to $700 cash back with their welcome bonuses.

This article was first posted on July 25, 2019 and is updated on a regular basis

Title Background Photo by Victor Ballesteros on Unsplash