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Credit card rewards are a fantastic way to get a little something back every time you make a purchase, whether you’re shopping for groceries or booking a hotel for a trip abroad.
Additionally, many cards offer a valuable range of perks and benefits that can improve your travel experiences, keep your purchases safe, and save you even more money.
Both the Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Card and the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite* Card not only offer the chance to earn excellent rewards, but they also offer exceptional perks like travel insurance and no FX fees.
In this head-to-head, we’ll look at how these two cards, earning different styles of rewards, compare to one another across the following 6 categories:
To begin our comparison, we’ll look at the welcome bonus offered by each of these credit cards since these are often a way to jumpstart your rewards account balance.
In terms of welcome offers, the Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Card isn’t currently providing new card members with a bonus of any kind.
However, this is not that surprising since the Wealthsimple card itself is fairly new and continues to have a waitlist of people who are looking to sign up.
On the other side of this comparison, the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite* Card typically provides a strong welcome offer to new cardholders.
These offers do fluctuate, but as an example, currently the card is offering up to 60,000 bonus Scene+ points, broken down as follows:
For this first category, we’re crowning the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite* Card as the winner since it offers new cardholders the chance to earn up to 60,000 Scene+ points, which are worth upwards of $600 when redeemed for travel, groceries, and more.
Comparatively, the Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Card is not currently offering new card members any welcome offer; though, it would not be surprising to see that change once they’ve moved through the waitlist of people who want to sign up for the card.
The minimum income requirements for the Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Card are as follows:
The Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite* Card has the following minimum income requirements:
In terms of minimum income, both cards have essentially identical requirements, entirely in-line with what we expect to see for a Visa Infinite card.
Given this, we’re calling this category a tie.
The annual fee for the Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Card comes to $240/year. For residents of Quebec, this fee is paid in full up front, whereas residents in the rest of Canada will be charged a monthly fee of $20.
Notably, this fee can be waived if you have assets of at least $100,000 with Wealthsimple or have at least $4,000 in qualifying direct deposits going into your Wealthsimple Chequing Account each month.
The annual fee for the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite* Card is $150; however, this fee can be waived if you have an eligible Scotiabank bank account, such as the Ultimate Package chequing account or the Preferred Package chequing account.
We think that the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite* Card is the winner of this category since it comes with a lower annual fee of $150 (versus the $240 fee requested by the Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Card), and it offers more accessible ways to have this fee waived entirely.
That said, if you meet the requirements to have the annual fee waived on the Wealthsimple card, then this category would certainly be a tie.
The Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Card and the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite* Card earn two different reward types: cash back and Scene+ points.
Depending on your preferences for rewards, each of these options has a lot of potential value, so let’s take a look at each program to see what we can expect from spending with these cards.
With the Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Card, you earn a base rate of 2% cash back on all your purchases.
Additionally, Wealthsimple has started featuring limited-time targeted offers of up to 10% cash back with select merchants.
For example, during a recent promotion, eligible cardholders saw the following “cash back boost” offers:
Plus, accessing your earned cash back is easy since it’s automatically deposited into your Wealthsimple Chequing Account every month.
For those with the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite* Card, you can earn up to 4 Scene+ points per $1 spent:
Given that Scene+ points are can be redeemed for 1 cent each, these earning rates represent a 4%, 3%, 2%, and 1% return, respectively.
For the earning category, we think that both cards are pretty well matched.
With the Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Card earning cash back and the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite* Card earning Scene+ points, we can compare the value of their earning rates to see how they stack up.
Since Scene+ points are generally worth 1 cent each, the earning rates with the Scotiabank card are worth upwards of 4%, 3%, 2%, and 1%.
Comparing this to the 2% base earning rate of the Wealthsimple card, plus it’s potential for cash back rates as high as 10%, we think both of the cards represent similar earning and value potential.
As we mentioned in the earlier sections, the Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Card and the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite* Card each have different rewards types, with one earning cash back and the other earning Scene+ points.
Given this, there’s certain to be a difference in how cardholders can access and enjoy their accumulated rewards, so let’s see how this plays out.
Redeeming the cash back earned with your Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Card is incredibly easy since you actually don’t have to do anything at all.
As part of having the Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Card, you’re required to also sign up for a Wealthsimple Chequing Account, and you have full control over when and how you redeem your cash back. You can transfer it at any time to any of your Wealthsimple accounts, for maximum flexibility.
Redeeming with the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite* Card is a bit more complicated, but for this effort you get to enjoy a number of different redemption options.
Once you’ve accumulated some Scene+ points, you can redeem them the following ways:
With the redemption category, it’s a bit difficult to choose a winner since a lot of it comes down to personal preference.
On the one hand, cash back is wonderfully straightforward (I mean who doesn’t like a cash bonus to lower their expenses each month?), but on the other hand, Scene+ lets you pick and choose and change where you redeem, and it lets you save up for bigger redemptions and enjoy travel without ever exchanging actual money.
As noted above, Scene+ points can typically be redeemed for 1 cent each, giving the Scotiabank card the higher consistent earning rate. That said, Wealthsimple’s earning rate of 2% is comparable to the Scotiabank card’s rate on everything except for eligible groceries and travel expenses.
Additionally, Wealthsimple’s new promotional rates of up to 10% cash back with select merchants is quite compelling, and we think it’s likely that the list of eligible merchants will expand, making it a feature that’s certainly worth watching.
All this is to say that we’re calling this category a draw since both cards offer similar redemption value, and the best card is ultimately whichever one earns the rewards you prefer to redeem.
The Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Card offers cardholders the following perks:
With the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite* Card, you can enjoy the following perks:
In terms of perks and benefits, we find that both of these cards are excellent and also very similar.
With both the Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Card and the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite* Card, we’re especially fond of the no-FX-fees feature since this is quite rare with Canadian cards, and it can save you a nice chunk of money when travelling.
However, we think the Scotiabank card comes out just ahead in this category thanks to its additional offer of 6 complimentary airport lounge passes. Not only are these wonderful to have when travelling, but they also represent considerable value and are fairly rare for a Visa Infinite card.
Now that we’ve made it through all 6 of our comparison categories, it’s time to sort out which card is the ultimate winner: the Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Card or the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite* Card.
We love that both cards offer no FX fees, travel insurance, and other similar perks, but from a competition standpoint, the Scotiabank card stands out with its offer of 6 complimentary airport lounge passes.
On the other side of the battle, we’re fans of Wealthsimple’s a no-fuss rewards system, letting your earn 2% across the board, as well as the occasional cash back boost of up to a 10% return.
Given the compelling benefits available with each card, and the fact that they each represent a completely different type of rewards style, we think that the best card in this head-to-head is whichever card earns the rewards that you prefer to earn.
Since both the Wealthsimple Visa Infinite Card and the Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite* Card are valuable cards with similar features and earn rates, you just need to decide if you prefer cash back or Scene+ points, and you’re ready to start earning!
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