CIBC · Visa
A travel branded student card with almost no travel insurance. The advertised "$200 in value" is mostly a food delivery membership rather than points.
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 CIBC publishes a $0 income requirement
- 1 point a dollar on gas, EV charging, groceries and drugstores
- Up to 12,500 Aventura points in the welcome offer, worth up to $125
- Aventura points can be redeemed against any travel booking rather than one airline
- $100,000 of common carrier accident insurance
Watch out for
- It is branded for travel and carries no travel medical, trip cancellation or trip interruption cover at all
- The "$200 in value" headline is padded with a first year Skip+ membership worth about $110
- Everything outside the bonus categories earns 1 point per $2, which is half the base rate of the Dividend student card
- Dining, transit, entertainment and recurring bills are not bonus categories
- No rental car collision damage cover, unlike the Aeroplan student card
What this card earns
- Groceries
- 1x
- Gas
- 1x
- Travel
- 1x
- Drugstore
- 1x
- Everything else
- 0.5x
- Bonus categories at once
- 1 you choose which
- What we value a point at
- 1¢
The earning fine print
1 Aventura Point per $1 spent at gas stations, EV charging, grocery stores and drug stores, and 1 point per $1 on travel booked through the CIBC Rewards Centre. All other purchases earn 1 point per $2 spent, which is expressed here as earn_base 0.5 points per dollar. No earn cap is published on the product page. Categories not in the accelerated list (dining, recurring bills, transit, entertainment) fall to the 1-point-per-$2 base.
The welcome offer
- Welcome bonus
- 12,500 points
What the offer actually requires
Headline is 'Earn up to $200 in value', but only up to 12,500 Aventura Points (which CIBC values at up to $125) are actual card rewards. The remaining ~$110 of the claimed value is a free first-year Skip+ membership, which is a third-party subscription, not points. CIBC does not publish the spend thresholds or qualifying window for the 12,500 points on this page, so bonus_tier1_spend and bonus_tier1_months are NOT PUBLISHED. No offer end date is published.
Fees and interest rates
- Annual fee
- None
- Additional card
- Free
- Foreign transaction fee
- 2.5%
- Purchase APR
- 21.99%
- Cash advance APR
- 22.99%
- Balance transfer APR
- 22.99%
Who can get this card
- Minimum personal income
- $0
Insurance and benefits
- Purchase protection
- Included
- Extended warranty
- Included
What the benefits really mean
Common Carrier Accident Insurance $100,000. Purchase Security (90 days) and Extended Protection Insurance. Despite the 'Aventura' travel branding there is NO travel medical, trip cancellation, trip interruption, flight delay, baggage or rental car coverage on the student version. Credit limit capped at $5,000 for Canadian students, $2,000 for international students. HEADLINE vs SUBSTANCE: the '$200 in value' welcome offer is mostly not points. Only up to 12,500 Aventura Points (up to $125 per CIBC) are card rewards; roughly $110 of the claimed value is a first-year Skip+ food-delivery membership. This is a travel-branded card with essentially no travel insurance. Only Common Carrier Accident ($100,000) is embedded. That pays out on death/dismemberment while travelling on a common carrier, it is not medical coverage. Students who assume 'Aventura = travel protection' will be uninsured abroad. Income published as $0 by CIBC (both 'No minimum annual income requirement' on the product page and '$0' on the student hub). APRs are client-side placeholders on the product page; figures taken from CIBC's catch-all 'All CIBC Personal Credit Cards' rate row, which does not name student cards individually. Quebec residents pay 21.99% on cash advances/balance transfers and are not charged the per-transaction cash advance fee. Credit limit hard-capped at $5,000 / $2,000 (international).
Our verdict
The problem with this card is the gap between what the name promises and what the terms deliver. It is called Aventura, it is sold on travel, and the only travel related insurance on it is common carrier accident cover, which pays out if you die on a plane. There is no travel medical. A student who assumes a travel card covers them abroad is going to find out the expensive way.
The earning is also thin: half a point per dollar outside a short bonus list, against 0.5% cash back and a 2% grocery rate on CIBC's own Dividend student card at the same $0 fee and the same $0 income requirement. If you want a student card from CIBC, take the Dividend one. If you want travel cover, buy it separately, because this card does not provide it.
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Where this came from. CIBC product page for fees, earn, bonus and insurance; CIBC student credit cards hub for the '$0' income requirement and enrolment wording; CIBC Credit Card Summary of Annual Interest Rates and Fees (current as of August 1, 2026) for APRs and 2.5% FX fee.. 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.