Explanations on credit cards in Canada
"A credit card is a way to borrow money. That's all. Sometimes the loans are very small - $5 - and sometimes they are larger. You can have a credit card with a company (bank or whatever) that you have no other relationship with. They're not a property of a bank account, they are their own thing. The card you describe sounds exactly like a debit card here, and you can treat your Canadian debit card like your French credit card - you pay for things directly from your bank account, assuming the money is in there. In Canada, many small stores take debit but not credit, so do be sure to get a debit card and not only a credit card. Now as to your specific concerns. You aren't going to ""forget to make a wire."" You're going to get a bill - perhaps a paper one, perhaps an email - and it will say ""here is everything you charged on your credit card this month"" along with a date, which will be perhaps 21 days from the statement date, not the date you used the card. Pay the entire balance (not just the minimum payment) by that date and you'll pay no interest. The bill date will be a specific date each month (eg the 23rd) so you can set yourself a reminder to check and pay your bill once a month. Building a credit history has value if you want to borrow a larger amount of money to buy a car or a house, or to start a business. Unlike the US, it doesn't really have an impact on things like getting a job. If you use your card for groceries, you use it enough, no worries. In 5 years it is nice to look back and see ""never paid late; mostly paid the entire amount each month; never went over limit; never went into collections"" and so on. In my experience you can tell they like you because they keep raising your limit without you asking them to. If you want to buy a $2500 item and your credit limit is $1500 you could prepay $1000 onto the credit card and then use it. Or you could tell the vendor you'd rather use your debit card. Or you could pay $1500 on the credit card and then rest with your debit card. Lots of options. In my experience once you get up to that kind of money they'd rather not use a credit card because of the merchant fees they pay." Is my understanding okay ? If so, it seems to me that this system is   rather error prone. By that I mean I could easily forget to make a   wire some day and be charged interests while I actually have more than   enough money on the check account to pay the debt. Which is where the credit card company can add fees so you pay more and they make more money. Don't forget that in the credit case, you are borrowing money rather than using your own. Another thing that bothers me is that the credit card apparently has a   rather low credit limit. If I wanted to buy something that costs $2500   but only have a credit limit of $1500, can I make a preemptive wire   from my check account to the VISA account to avoid facing the limit ?   If so, what is the point for the customer of having two accounts (and   two cards for that matter...) ? If you were the credit card company, do you believe people should be given large limits first? There are prepaid credit cards where you could put a dollar amount on and it would reject if the balance gets low enough. Iridium Prepaid MasterCard would be an example here that I received one last year as I was involved in the floods in my area and needed access to government assistance which was given this way. Part of the point of building up a credit history is that this is part of how one can get the credit limits increased on cards so that one can have a higher limit after demonstrating that they will pay it back and otherwise the system could be abused. There may be a risk that if you prepay onto a credit card and then want to take back the money that there may be fees involved in the transaction. Generally, with credit cards the company makes money on the fees involved for transactions which may come from merchants or yourself as a cash advance on a credit card will be charged interest right away while if you buy merchandise in a store there may not be the interest charged right away. If so, it seems to me that this system is rather error prone. By that I mean I could easily forget to make a wire some day and be charged interests while I actually have more than enough money on the check account to pay the debt. I have my back account (i.e. chequing account) and VISA account at/from the same bank (which, in my case, is the Royal Bank of Canada). I asked my bank to set up an automatic transfer, so that they automatically pay off my whole VISA balance every month, on time, by taking the money from my bank account. In that way I am never late paying the VISA so I never pay interest charges. IOW I use the VISA like a debit card; the difference is that it's accepted at some places where a debit card isn't (e.g. online, and for car rentals), and that the money is deducted from my bank account at the end of the month instead of immediately. "I think it's worth pointing out explicitly that the biggest difference between a credit card (US/Canada) and a debit card (like your French carte de crédit) is that with a credit card, it's entirely possible to not pay the bill or to pay only the ""minimum payment"" when asked. This results in you owing significantly more money due to interest, which can snowball into higher and higher levels of debt, and end up getting rapidly out of control. This is the reason why you should ALWAYS pay off the ENTIRE balance every month, as attested to in the other answers; it's not uncommon to find people in the US with thousands of dollars of debt they can't pay off from misuse of credit cards."
There are two separate cases here that people are not separating. Any card will allow you to pay an amount not exceeding the actually posted charges.  Some cards will allow you to pay more than this, some will not.  My parents have deliberately overpaid as a means of having a higher credit limit, I've been denied (different card) when trying to do the same thing and the website wouldn't even allow me to pay temporary charges that hadn't yet become real.  (A human operator would allow paying those, though.) You have to check your contract to be sure what is it you're paying for. Typically, you get some of the following features which can be unavailable to you in banks which don't charge a monthly fee: Arguably, these expenses could be paid by the interest rates your money earn to the bank. Notice how banks which don't charge a fee usually require you to have a minimum amount of cash in your account or a minimum monthly cash flow. When you pay for your bank's services in cash, there's no such restrictions. I'm not sure if typical banks in the UK would take away your credit card if you lose your job and don't qualify for that kind of card any more, but I do know banks who would. The choice is yours, and while it's indeed sad that you don't have this kind of choice in Canada, it's also not like you're paying solely for the privilege of letting them invest your money behind your back. From a Canadian point of view, I think we are generally very similar to how you describe Austria.  The only thing I use cash for, is to pay for my coffee at a local micro-roaster who only accepts cash.  Cheques, I only use to pay friends.  Everything else is debit or credit card.  Very few businesses around here will even accept cheques anymore. There are different ways of credit card purchase authorizations. if some choose less secure method it's their problem. Merchants are charged back if a stolen card is used. This is quite possibly a tactic to attract new clients.. ICICI is one of the banks with a small presence in Canada. There are also banks like Tangerine and PC Financial that are aggressively trying to get new clients to switch over from the big 5 banks. At the time of writing, for a limited time, PC Financial is paying 2.5% interest on savings accounts versus 1.4% for a 1 year GIC. One possibility is to ask RBC to lend you some money (or more specifically, to lend you some more money): an overdraft, a personal loan, or whatever. To discuss this you should to talk to your personal banker (not a teller), probably by appointment: to explain why you want it, and how and when you expect repay it. You might (I don't know) say that you want the loan (or some of the loan) to pay off the Visa, and/or for the travel. If you've only just arrived in Canada, however, then I don't see why they should want to lend it to you (i.e. why they should think you're a good credit risk). Is there anyone else (e.g. an immigration sponsor or parent or employer) who might co-sign (a.k.a. guarantee) the loan? I have never had this issue before with any other credit cards but I got an RBC Visa in Canada In some countries (not Canada) a Visa behaves more like a debit card, i.e. you can only spend money you have in the account. Corporations are removed from the options markets.  They can neither permit nor forbid others from trading them, local laws notwithstanding. No national options market is as prolific as the US's.  In fact, most countries don't even have options trading.  Some won't even allow options but rather option-like derivatives. Finance in Canada is much more tightly regulated than the US.  This primer on Canadian option eligibility shows how much. While US eligibility is also stringent, the quotas are far less restrictive, so a highly liquid small company can also be included where it would be excluded in Canada for failing the top 25% rule. "I think this stuff was more valid when grace periods were longer. For example, back in the 90's, I had an MBNA card with a 35 day grace period. Many business travellers used Diner's Club charge cards because they featured a 60 day grace period. There are valid uses for this: As JoeTaxpayer stated, if you are benefiting from ""tricks"" like this, you probably have other problems that you probably ought to deal with." Given that the laws on consumer liability for unauthorized transactions mean no cost in most cases, the CVV is there to protect the merchant.  Typically a merchant will receive a lower cost from their bank to process the transaction with the CVV code versus without. As far as the Netflix case goes, (or any other recurring billing for that matter) they wouldn't care as much about it because Visa/MC/Amex regulations prohibit storage of the CVV.  So if they collect it then it's only used for the first transaction and renewals just use the rest of the card info (name, expiration date, address). Does the presence of CVV indicate the merchant has better security?  Maybe, maybe not.  It probably means they care about their costs and want to pay the bank as little as possible to process the transaction. "There are two reasons you would get a higher yield for savings accounts: either because it is not guaranteed by a national deposit insurance fund (CDIC I presume in Canada), or you have to hold it for a longer term. Money Market Accounts are insured in the U.S. and are also very liquid since you can debit from it any time. Because of this, they offer much lower rates of interest than comparable products.  If you look at the savings products such as the 1.50% momentum savings account offered by ScotiaBank, you actually have to hold a $5000 balance and not make any debit from it for 90 days in order to get the extra 0.75% that would get you to 1.50%. Essentially this is roughly equivalent to offering you a 1.50% GIC with a 0.75% withdrawal penalty fee, but simply presented in more ""positive"" terms. As for the Implicity Financial Financial 1.75% offering, it looks like it is not insured by the CDIC." I have a visa with Scotiabank and I purposefully keep a negative balance at times. The guy at the bank said it was a great idea. I have never received a cheque, nor do I want one. The reason is that it allows me to make quick purchases without having to worry about paying back and due dates. Only with large purchases do I allow myself to do that. I still check in with my account every once in a while just to make sure everything is all right. It allows for good money management and piece of mind. I have been doing it for a couple of years and have not been penalized at all. (Wouldn't really make sense to do so though.) If you're willing to use OFX or QIF files, most Canadian banks can spit output more data than 90 days. The files are typically used to import into Quicken-like local programs, but can be easily parsed for your webapp, I imagine. I'm an Australian who just got back from a trip to Malaysia for two weeks over the New Year, so this feels a bit like dejavu! I set up a 28 Degrees credit card (my first ever!) because of their low exchange rate and lack of fees on credit card transactions. People say it's the best card for travel and I was ready for it. However, since Malaysia is largely a cash economy (especially in the non-city areas), I found myself mostly just withdrawing money from my credit card and thus getting hit with a cash advance fee ($4) and instant application of the high interest rate (22%) on the money. Since I was there already and had no other alternatives, I made five withdrawals over the two weeks and ended up paying about $21 in fees. Not great! But last time I travelled I had a Commonwealth Bank Travel Money Card (not a great idea), and if I'd used that instead on this trip and given up fees for a higher exchange rate, I would have been charged an extra $60! Presumably my Commonwealth debit card would have been the same. This isn't even including mandatory ATM fees. If I've learned anything from this experience and these envelope calculations I'm doing now, it's these: Lived in same situation for 8 years. I walked into a BMO - told them what I needed to do and they set me right up - no U.S. accounts necessary. My account allowed me to pay bills in USD or CDN. Doesn't get any simpler than that. I haven't read the terms here but the question may not have a good answer.  That won't stop me from trying.   Call the real rate (interest rate - inflation) and you'll have what is called negative real rates. It's rare for the overnight real rate to be negative.  If you check the same sources for historical data you'll find it's usually higher.  This is because borrowing money is usually done to gain an economic benefit, ie. make a profit.  That is no longer a consideration when borrowing money short term and is IMO a serious problem.  This will cause poor investment decisions like you see in housing. Notice I said overnight rate.  That is the only rate set by the BoC and the longer rates are set by the market.  The central bank has some influence because a longer term is just a series of shorter terms but if you looked up the rate on long Canadian real return bonds, you'd see them with a real rate around 1%. What happens when the central bank raise or lowers rates will depend on the circumstances.  The rate in India is so high because they are using it to defend the rupee.  If people earn more interest they have a preference to buy that currency rather than others.  However these people aren't stupid, they realize it's the real rate that matters.  That's why Japan can get away with very low rates and still have demand for the currency - they have, or had, deflation.  When that changed, the preference for their currency changed. So if Canada hast forex driven inflation then the BoC will have to raise rates to defend the dollar for the purpose of lowering inflation from imports.  Whether it works or not is another story.  Note that the Canadian dollar is very dependant on the total dollar value of net oil exports. If Canada has inflation due too an accelerating economy this implies that there are profitable opportunities so businesses and individuals will be more likely to pay a positive real rate of interest.  In that scenario the demand for credit money will drive the real rate of return.