Triangle Mastercard Review – No Annual Fee Rewards Card

With the Triangle Mastercard, you’ll get 4% Canadian Tire Money at Canadian Tire, Sport Check, Atmosphere, Sports Rousseau, Hockey Experts, and other participating stores In Canada.

You can redeem your Canadian Tire Money (CTM) at any of the Canadian Tire locations for free purchases. What’s even better is that with the Triangle Mastercard, you’ll earn 5 cents per litre on gas-filled at Husky stations and convert your purchases of $200 and above into smaller easy payments. 

We are used to seeing a plethora of credit card options from banks and other types of financial institutions. In fact, we all use at least one of these. This makes it interesting to see whenever a non-financial institution comes up with a credit card of its own.

This is the case with Canadian Tire. The retail company has two Mastercards for their customers to utilize: Triangle World Elite Mastercard, and Triangle Mastercard. In this review, we will learn everything about the Canadian Tire Mastercard. 

Canadian Tire and Triangle Mastercard

Canadian Tire may be new to the financial services playing field, but it is by far one of the oldest establishments in Canada. This company has been around for almost a century, making it one of the biggest and oldest department store brands in Canada.

Canadian Tire was also one of the pioneer brands to implement a store-loyalty program. This was as far back as 1958 when they launched Canadian Tire Money (CTM). The company initially made Canadian Tire Money as a physical currency. However, they’ve thankfully evolved with the times.

In 2018, the company went through a full digital re-branding. The loyalty program became known as Triangle Rewards and the CTM is now tracked digitally with the use of fobs, cards, and apps.

As for their two new credit card options, the Triangle Mastercard is the entry-level option while the Triangle Elite World Mastercard is the more premium choice. Still, both cards offer customers the opportunity to earn CTM whenever they shop, even outside Canadian Tire stores.

Calculating the dollar equivalent of Canadian Tire Money is quite simple to do. Every 1% of CTM can be redeemed for $0.01 (1 cent). Rewards redemption can only be done at select store brands. You can do this at any Canadian Tire, or Sports Check, and select Mark’s and Atmosphere stores.

Triangle World Elite Mastercard

The Triangle World Elite Mastercard is probably the best the department store has to offer in terms of the rewards customers get from using it.

While the card offers some lucrative percentage CTM earnings, it may not be for everybody.

Pros Of The Triangle World Elite Mastercard 

• You earn 4% in CTM for every Canadian Tire purchase: For every dollar, you spend at a Canadian Tire store, you get back 4% in Canadian Tire Money.

• Also, the rewards are uncapped, so you can earn 4% all year round, every time you pay with your credit card at the store. This is especially attractive, given that it is a no-fee card.

• You earn 4% CTM for every purchase at Sports Chen, Mark’s, and Atmosphere: The percentage of rewards continues for purchases at Sports Chen, Mark’s clothing stores, and at Atmosphere camping locations. These stores, along with Canadian Tire give the credit card holders a wide range of products to receive rewards on.

• You earn 3% from your grocery shopping at any grocery store: Canadian Tire boasts a massive amount of products on its shelves, but one category they do not offer is groceries.

• So with the Triangle World Elite card, you can earn 3% CTM on all your grocery shopping. This includes big brands like Loblaws, Longos, Sobers, Metro, No Frills, and more. Excluded stores include Walmart and Costco; in these stores, you’ll only earn 1% CTM. The 1% rewards will also come into play for every other store after you have spent $12,000 in grocery shopping for the year.

• You’ll earn rewards for filling up at gas stations: This only applies to Gas+/Essence+ and Husky stations. For every litre of gas you buy, you earn 5 cents or 7 cents for standard or premium fuel respectively.

• Free roadside assistance: If you were paying for it, this service will cost you north of $99. However, with the Triangle World Elite card, you get this for free: battery jump starts, flat tire changes, emergency towing, trip accident insurance, and so on.

• You earn rewards everywhere else: Besides the rewards that come with shopping at Canadian Tire and other partner stores and businesses, you also get the standard 1% CTM reward for shopping anywhere else. This means you get rewarded every time you pull out your credit card.

• You don’t pay any annual fees: This is the icing on the cake. No catch, the Triangle Elite World Mastercard has no annual fees whatsoever.

Cons Of The Triangle World Elite Mastercard 

• Rewards can only be redeemed at select stores: While it is a little disappointing, it is not surprising. Your CTM rewards cannot be redeemed everywhere.

• As expected, Triangle Mastercard Rewards is a store-loyalty program, so rewards can only be redeemed at all Canadian Tire and Sports Chek branches, and also at select locations of Mark’s and Atmosphere.

• The rewards you get for spending at Husky and Gas+ stations can only be redeemed at the stores mentioned here. They can’t be used to buy fuel, and cannot be redeemed for statement credits or cash as you would get with most rewards or cash-back credit cards from financial institutions.

• Because Canadian Tire is literally everywhere in the country though and holds such a huge swath of inventory, it’s safe to say that if you hold a Canadian Tire credit card, you’re possibly already doing all your shopping there anyway. The point is that this may not be much of a con for you.

• The 4% CTM is pre-tax: The rewards you earn for shopping at Canadian Tire or other select brands are actually based on the pre-tax price of the item. By the time you consider the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST), it does put a slight dent in your 4% rewards. Still, this remains a strong rewards rate for a non-annual fee credit card. Plus, it’s exponentially better than the 0.4% rewards Canadian Tire used to offer.

• There is a high minimum income requirement: This is probably the only significant con that comes with this credit card. To be considered for the Triangle World Elite Mastercard, you’ll need to be earning a personal income of $80,000 at the least. For a household, the minimum requirement goes up to $150,000.

Triangle Mastercard

For those who are bogged down by the cons of the Elite World Mastercard, Canadian Tire has another card on offer: the Triangle Mastercard.

This option is much more lenient than the Elite World and does not carry the same steep income requirements.

It’s also a no-fee card and has no real minimum income requirements.

Pros Of The Triangle Mastercard 

• You earn 4% CTM for shopping at Canadian Tire and its affiliate stores: On this benefit, this card keeps in step with the World Elite Mastercard. You can swipe your card at any Canadian Tire, Sports Chek, and eligible Mark’s and Atmosphere locations and get a pre-tax reward of 4% in CTM.

• You’ll earn gas rewards: For buying fuel at Husky and Gas+, you’ll get a flat 5¢ in CTM reward for every litre, whether premium or standard fuel.

• You earn for shopping anywhere: Like the World Elite, you get a flat reward percentage for shopping outside Canadian Tire and its affiliate stores. But the reward here is 0.8% per dollar in CTM money as opposed to Elite World’s 1% rewards.

• It has a low eligibility requirement: The requirements for this card are virtually attainable for anybody. There is no minimum monthly requirement and no annual fee, which makes the card pretty easy to qualify for.

Cons Of The Triangle Mastercard

It doesn’t have that many perks: This can be forgiven though, given that it is an entry-level card.

The Triangle Mastercard has no rewards for shopping at grocery stores and does not offer roadside assistance like the World Elite card

Triangle Mastercard Add-On Benefits

So while Canadian Tire is not a bank, it does have its own banking division: Canadian Tire Bank. And when you qualify for any of these cards, you get access to the following banking benefits:

• Convenient and no-fee financing: When you make a purchase of at least $200 on your Triangle Mastercard, you have the option to pay it back in monthly installments up to a year.

• For purchases of $500 and over, you can pay back in installments for up to two years. Besides giving you the flexibility of installment payments, there are no interests or fees attached. However, you have to make sure not to miss a payment to avoid activating interests.

• You can use it to pay for significant, non-credit card bills: Traditional credit cards cannot be used to pay for hefty bills like property taxes, water bills, insurance premiums, and tuition expenses. But you can do so with any of Canadian Tire’s Triangle Mastercard you’ll even earn money back on those bills; that will be 1% or 0.8% depending on the credit card you hold.

• Again, be sure that you can pay off what you owe every month and as and when due. If you miss a single payment, you will incur significant interest rates that can damage your credit.

Final Words

Both these credit cards are worth the trouble, more so the Elite World Mastercard than the Triangle Mastercard. Still, if you do most of your shopping at Canadian Tire or any of its affiliate stores, it won’t matter which card you go with. This is because both cards will give you 4% CTM in rewards which you can rack up and convert to free purchases at Canadian Tire.

If you want more rewards like grocery shopping earnings or roadside assistance, the World Elite card really stands out as one of the best no-fee credit cards available in Canada.

Sharing is Caring. Please share this article on social media and help spread the word. How frequently do you shop at Canadian Tire or any of its affiliate stores? If you do, what credit cards do you normally use to pay – is it the regular cashback cards? Or any other points card. Do let me know in the comments below. 

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