Bank Bonus Churning in Canada: What It Actually Pays

Canada’s banks are paying $250 to $500 right now to open a chequing account. The money is real, it lands in your account, and there’s a small, determined group of Canadians collecting it on a rotation.

What the offer pages don’t print next to the number is the arithmetic. RBC’s bonus sits on an account whose $16.95 monthly fee can’t be waived by holding a balance, and the terms want that account open for 365 days. Twelve months of fees is $203.40, so a $450 headline is a $247 payout.

What follows is the net rather than the headline: which offers need your actual paycheque, who each bank counts as a new client, when it can take the money back, and what the CRA does with it.

What is bank bonus churning?

Bank bonus churning is opening a chequing or savings account to collect its welcome bonus, meeting the conditions, keeping the account open long enough to satisfy the terms, then moving to the next offer. In Canada it pays a few hundred dollars per bank, a handful of times a year, and the limit is eligibility rather than effort.

That last part is where the Canadian version of this hobby differs from the American one. Canada has six large banks and maybe a dozen realistic online alternatives, so the pool is small. Once you’ve claimed at a bank, the same bank’s terms lock you out for years.

What are Canadian banks paying, and what do you have to do?

Three offers are open as of August 2026, and all three close this autumn. What separates them is whether you have to move your paycheque and how long you’re on the hook.

RBC sits outside that table on purpose. Its offers rotate on a fixed calendar, its most recent cash offer paid $450 for opening a Signature No Limit or VIP Banking account, and that qualifying window has closed. Its clauses are the interesting part, and they’re the same from offer to offer.

The amounts rotate. The clauses don’t.

Bonus sizes move around every quarter, which is why roundups of “the best current promotions” go stale within weeks of being written. The eligibility rules, the payout delays and the clawback language barely change. That’s the durable part, and it’s how you tell whether an offer is worth your afternoon.

Who counts as a new client?

Every bank defines this differently, and the definitions are wildly inconsistent. This is the real constraint on churning in Canada, not the number of banks.

Read those side by side and the strategy is obvious. RBC’s five-year lookback means one claim per half-decade. TD’s third condition is the strictest thing on the page, because it isn’t about accounts at all: taking any TD chequing offer in a three-year span disqualifies you from the next one. Simplii and Tangerine use fixed dates instead of rolling windows, which in practice means once ever.

So the realistic Canadian ceiling is four or five claims spread over a couple of years, not a monthly rotation. Anyone promising otherwise is describing the American market.

What counts as a direct deposit?

A transfer you push yourself from another bank usually doesn’t count. What a bank checks is how the deposit arrives: a payroll or benefits payment carries an originator code that marks it as recurring income, and a transfer you initiate doesn’t.

The exact list varies by bank, and Tangerine is one of the few that publishes one. Its terms (opens in a new tab) accept a pension, Employment Insurance, Old Age Security, the Canada Pension Plan, workers’ compensation, parental assistance and the income security benefit, alongside ordinary payroll. Simplii says only that most automated recurring direct deposits are eligible, so check before you count on one.

The offers you can satisfy without touching your payroll

This is the single most useful thing to know before you start, and it’s sitting in the terms of the two biggest offers. Both TD and RBC ask you to complete any two of three qualifying activities, and direct deposit is only one of the three.

TD’s other two are one online bill payment of $50 or more and one recurring pre-authorized debit of $50 or more. RBC’s are two pre-authorized monthly payments and two bill payments to a service provider. Point a phone bill and a streaming subscription at the new account and you’ve qualified for $500 without your employer ever hearing about it.

Simplii and Tangerine give you no such route. Simplii wants recurring direct deposits landing for three consecutive months, and Tangerine’s terms say the word payroll outright. If you’re going to move your payroll anyway, our guide to switching banks in Canada covers the order to do it in so nothing bounces.

What does a bonus actually net after fees?

The fee on the account is what turns a good offer into a mediocre one, and it’s the one number the headline never mentions. Two of the four accounts below are on our list of the best no-fee bank accounts in Canada, which is not a coincidence.

RBC is the one to watch. Its fee can’t be waived by keeping a balance at all. The Value Program cuts it to as little as $4 a month, but only if you hold other eligible RBC products such as a credit card, a mortgage or investments, which a churner opening one account won’t have. So the full $16.95 is the realistic number, and 12 months of it comes to 45% of a $450 bonus.

The $4,000 waiver isn’t free either

TD’s fee disappears if you keep $4,000 in the account at the end of every day, which reads like the obvious move.

The $4,000 has to sit in a chequing account, which pays you nothing. In Simplii’s promotional savings account (opens in a new tab) at 4.60% the same money would earn about $77 over the 153 days the promotional rate runs. So the waiver saves you $215.40 in fees over the year and gives up somewhere north of $77 in interest. Still the better move, just by less than it looks. Current rates across the online banks are in our roundup of the best high-interest savings accounts in Canada.

When does the bank take the money back?

Every one of these offers is reversible, and RBC’s terms (opens in a new tab) are the bluntest about it. The account has to stay open, in good standing, with the qualifying criteria still in effect, for 365 days from the qualify-by date. Break any of that and RBC reserves the right to debit the bonus amount from your account, or from any other account you hold with them, even if that puts you into overdraft.

That’s the clause worth planning around. It means the money isn’t yours the day it lands, and it means a churn cycle is a year long rather than a quarter.

Simplii applies the same idea to the gift-card half of its offer, requiring the account to stay open, active, in good standing and unconverted for at least one year. TD’s $500 is paid within 12 weeks of the conditions being met, and only if the account is still open with those conditions continuing to be met.

Does opening accounts hurt your credit score?

It depends on the bank and on whether overdraft protection is attached. A plain chequing application is often a soft check, which nobody but you sees. Ask for overdraft protection or bundle a credit card and it becomes a credit application, with a hard inquiry to match.

According to Equifax Canada (opens in a new tab), hard inquiries may stay on your Equifax report for three years. The effect on your score fades well before that, but a lender reading the report still sees the pattern.

For most people churning two or three accounts a year, this is a non-issue. If a mortgage renewal or application is coming up, it’s the one part of this worth timing around. Call the bank and ask whether the application pulls credit, and decline the overdraft.

Are bank bonuses taxable in Canada?

The honest answer is that it depends on which kind of bonus you got, and the CRA has never published a bright line for one of them.

Promotional interest is straightforward. A savings account paying 4.60% for five months is paying you interest. That’s income, your bank issues a T5 (opens in a new tab) once it crosses $50 in a year, and the CRA expects it on line 12100 (opens in a new tab) whether a slip arrives or not.

A flat cash reward for opening a chequing account is murkier. It’s a fixed payment for completing a task, calculated on no balance and paid at no rate, and the CRA has published nothing specific about it. The banks aren’t resolving it for you either: Simplii’s terms say the recipient of the cash reward is solely responsible for any tax consequences associated with their receipt of it, which is a bank declining to take a position.

In practice these arrive without a slip, and the amounts are small. If you’re claiming several in one year it could be worth asking an accountant rather than assuming. This is general information rather than tax advice, and your own situation is what matters.

A payout that doesn’t need a new account

Everything above pays you for moving your banking around. Lodavo pays you for saving, and nothing has to move.

It’s a free Canadian app that connects to the savings or chequing account you already use. Every $25 you have saved earns you a free ticket in a weekly cash draw, with a guaranteed prize of at least $100 going to a user every week and a top prize of $10,000. Save more one week and you go into the next draw with more tickets.

That’s a good fit if you’re churning. If you’re holding $4,000 in a TD account to dodge a monthly fee, or you’ve got money parked in three places waiting out a 365-day clause, that balance is already sitting there. It counts. Lodavo works with virtually any Canadian bank or credit union, so it doesn’t matter which one you opened last.

Is it worth doing?

For most people, two or three claims a year is realistic. On the offers above that’s $550 at the low end and $1,050 if you take all three, for a few hours of admin. That’s a good hourly rate.

The mistakes are all in the same places. Taking a bonus on a fee-heavy account without doing the subtraction. Closing early and getting debited. Burning a five-year eligibility window on a small offer when the same bank runs bigger ones. Read the eligibility clause before the dollar amount, and check the monthly fee before you decide anything.

Ready to make saving more interesting? Download Lodavo free on the Apple App Store (opens in a new tab) or Google Play Store (opens in a new tab) and start earning tickets in the weekly draw.

Terms and conditions apply. No purchase necessary (alternate method of entry available). Skill-testing question required. Open to legal residents of Canada who are the age of majority. Odds depend on the number of eligible entries received. Full rules and odds at our contest rules.