BMO · Mastercard
3% on groceries sounds good until you find the cap is $500 per statement period rather than per year. Maximum bonus earning is about $240 a year and the base rate is 0.5%.
Rates and features verified 2026-08-18Full terms and conditionsHow we research cards
What we like, and what we don’t
Worth having
- No annual fee and no fee for additional cards
- 3% on groceries, which is the highest no fee grocery rate on this page
- A 0.99% balance transfer rate for nine statement periods with a 2% fee
- Purchase protection and extended warranty included
- $125 welcome offer for a free card
Watch out for
- The grocery cap is $500 PER STATEMENT PERIOD, not per year, so the 3% is worth at most $15 a month
- The 0.5% base rate is among the worst on this page
- Only two bonus categories. No gas, dining, travel, drugstore or transit
- Grocery earning is limited to merchant code 5411 in Canada, so Costco and many superstores earn 0.5%
- No travel insurance, no rental car coverage, no mobile device coverage
- The welcome offer is three separate capped buckets rather than the flat 5% the headline implies
- Cancel within 90 days and BMO claws back everything you earned
What this card earns
- Groceries
- 3%
- Recurring bills and subscriptions
- 1%
- Everything else
- 0.5%
- Bonus rates apply up to
- $12,000 of annual spending after that, the base rate
The earning fine print
THE CAPS ARE PER STATEMENT PERIOD, NOT ANNUAL. 3% on groceries applies to the first $500 of grocery spending each statement period, and 1% on recurring bills applies to the first $500 each statement period. The two caps are separate and do not share a pot. That is a maximum of $15 a month from groceries and $5 from bills. The $12,000 recorded here is our annualisation of $1,000 a month and is not a BMO figure. Everything else, and everything past either cap, earns 0.5%. Grocery earning is merchant code 5411 at Canadian merchants only, so warehouse clubs and many superstores earn 0.5%.
The welcome offer
- Welcome bonus
- $125 after you spend $2,500, within 3 months
- Offer ends
- 2026-10-31
What the offer actually requires
The headline is "up to 5% cash back on every purchase in your first 3 months". It is not a flat 5% and not one spending threshold. It is three separately capped buckets: $500 of groceries, $500 of recurring bills and $1,500 of everything else, totalling $125. The footnotes also mix bases inside a single sentence, quoting the base rate per billing cycle and the bonus rate across all three cycles. Cancel within 90 days and all cash back earned is taken back.
Fees and interest rates
- Annual fee
- None
- Additional card
- Free
- Foreign transaction fee
- 2.5%
- Cash advance fee
- $5
- Dishonoured payment fee
- $48
- Purchase APR
- 21.99%
- Cash advance APR
- 23.99%
- Balance transfer APR
- 23.99%
- Balance transfer promo
- 0.99% for 9 months
- Balance transfer fee
- 2%
Who can get this card
- Minimum personal income
- Not published by the issuer
Insurance and benefits
- Purchase protection
- Included
- Extended warranty
- Included
What the benefits really mean
No travel insurance, no rental car coverage and no mobile device coverage. The rental car benefit is a discount of up to 20% with National and Alamo, not a damage waiver. BMO publishes no minimum income for this card, only that you must "meet minimum income requirements". Quebec residents pay 21.99% on cash advances and balance transfers rather than 23.99%. The purchase rate comes from BMO's "all other cards" row rather than a line naming this card.
Our verdict
A free card with one good rate and a cap that undoes most of it. A household spending $1,000 a month on groceries earns 3% on half of that and 0.5% on the rest, which works out closer to 1.75% on the grocery line and worse everywhere else.
The Tangerine costs the same nothing, lets you choose your own 2% categories and does not cap them, which beats this for most people. Where this card does earn its place is the balance transfer: 0.99% for nine statement periods with a 2% fee is a real offer on a card with no annual fee.
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Where this came from. bmo.com product page, terms and conditions popup, no-fee CashBack benefits guide, cost of borrowing insert June 2026. We take every figure from the issuer’s own pages, never from another comparison site, and we leave a field blank rather than guess at it.