Last week Bank Guru announced on Twitter that we were hearing a few rumours concerning the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC). The fact is, we have heard quite a few things, and we want to share it with all of our readers on BankNerd.

There are in fact several rumours we have heard concerning RBC, which is why we will be covering them in a series (as to not overwhelm everyone at once).

The first of the rumours we have heard surround RBC’s personal accounts.

You will find I compiled the rumours into a table, which can be found below:

Were these changes even necessary?

The changes made are not as bad as you all expected, right? In fact, I would go as far as to say two out of the three accounts I mentioned got a bit better.

The RBC VIP Banking will have 10 free Interac e-Transfers/ month! Honestly that is more than I can imagine anyone using in a month, then again have more for the same is a great deal to me.

Now senior clients holding the RBC VIP Banking account do lose out on their rebate, but we have heard there is a possibility that a new change might make this rebate loss not worth complaining about.

The RBC Signature No Limit Banking may have increased by a dollar, but to be honest, I do not think it was a bad increase considering your are getting an additional 3 Interac e-Transfers every month and 3 cross-border debits/ month. The value of these additional transactions equate more than the $1 increase, making the account better than it was despite the increase in price.

Is the RBC Day to Day Banking account worth it?

Now the RBC Day to Day Banking account got worse, transactions got decreased, and you would think that if you were to lower the daily transactions, maybe, just maybe the excess debit fees would decrease if not stay the same. Well, as you have seen above, it increased to $1/ excess item. Overdraft protection also increased on it.

It wasn’t like I liked the account to begin with, but I can see some people using it.

You can of course get the monthly fee written off through the Multi-rebate program, but it does not change the fact that for people who use this account regularly, they need to now only make 10 transactions a month.

This account in my opinion not even worth looking at anymore.

Now as I mentioned these are only rumours we have been hearing, but if it does turn out to be true, remember, you heard it hear first!

What do you think of these changes to RBC’s personal accounts?

Last year, I wrote an article on Wave Accounting; which is a service that is ideal to help business owners become more successful.

Wave Accounting is a service that does a great job of basic accounting, particularly generating and tracking invoices, tracking expenses, and providing a dashboard that shows graphically what is going on in your business financially.

It recently caught my attention again when I saw that Wave Accounting recently introduced a brand new feature called Wave Payroll.

What is Wave Payroll?

As you have probably guessed from the name of the feature, Wave Payroll is an online payroll system that small business owners can use to pay their employees, handle deductions, and much more.

Wave Payroll is a very easy payroll application, it is in my opinion an ideal way to manage your business’ payroll. The features of Wave Payroll include:

• Pay your employees easily, whether they are salaried employees or hourly workers. This is made easy with a low fee of $3 per employee per payroll
• Direct deposit to your employee’s bank accounts at no additional charge, or pay by cheque if you prefer this method
• Manage employees, time sheets, vacations and overtime easily
• Automatically calculate your CRA withholding, and have it paid to the government on your behalf
• Records of employment and T4s are included at no extra charge.

So the cost of using Wave Payroll is $3 per employee per payroll, however you do not pay a dime until you run your first payroll. There is absolutely no setup fees involved in using Wave Payroll.

It took me about 45 seconds to set up my Wave Payroll account (all I had to do was integrate it with my Wave Accounting account).

To integrate your Wave Payroll account to your Wave Accounting account, follow the steps below:

1. Go to Wave Payroll(you will need to log into your Wave Accounting account) and click “Add Wave Payroll”
2. Allow Wave Payroll to access your Wave Accounting information
3. Choose your bank account; on this page you choose where you want Wave Accounting to record your payroll expenses.
4. You are now finished Wave Accounting integration and can begin adding payrolls onto your account.

Is Wave Payroll worth it?

Without a doubt, Wave Payroll is worth using; you take away the time it takes to manually manage your employee’s pay, etc., and do it all online in an easy manner.

One thing I like about Wave Payroll is the Dashboard; on it you will find “To do items”, “Upcoming Events” and “Payroll history”. As you can see in the image below, the Upcoming Events section shows you dates such as when your next Payroll is or upcoming holidays. The Payroll history is the best feature on the dashboard because you are shown all aspects of your employee’s payroll; their regular pay, overtime and vacation pay.

Another great thing about Wave Payroll is that it makes life easier for anyone wanting to get Direct Deposit done without the hassle. You just need to enter your employee’s bank account information and you are done.

With Wave Payroll at your side, you can easily review your pay stubs for your employee(s) for any particular invoice, and even print it off for record keeping purposes.

Overall, I think that if you are looking for an easy to manage payroll system, then Wave Payroll is definitely a good thing to use.

Although I wish it was free like with Wave Account, at $3 per employee per payroll, it is still a deal.

What do you think of Wave Payroll?

The week flew by incredibly fast; the weather was all over the place but I for one am happy that it warmed up as the week went on. Well as you know, it is time for BankNerd’s Best of the Best series.

Before we get into this weeks Best of the Best I thought I would share a video I found to commemorate the passing of Groundhog day; on a side note, it seems that winter will continue.

As usual, we have highlighted a few of our articles that were published this week and articles I have read on various blogs that I thought deserved to be shared.

Before we get into this weeks Best of the Best I thought I would share a video I found to commemorate the passing of Groundhog day; on a side note, it seems that winter will continue although I don’t mind having winter if the weather these past few days continue.

Our Best of the Best

1. BMO InvestorLine announced new mutual fund research tools to help clients make more informed choices as they continue to invest.
2. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) is offering a great Savings account deal for people to take advantage of.
3. This week I covered the RBC and Shoppers Optimum Bank Account and what features you can expect to find with the account.
4. I covered a dilemma my friend faced as her OSAP cheque was held. Why would a government cheque be held?

Best Around the World

The Financial Highway published a great article covering titled “6 Things your might not know about your Home Equity Line of Credit“. I liked the fact that the article covered things that were covered in a recent survey concerning  their HELOC.

I came across a great article on Retire Happy Blog, titled “ New Cpp Rules may make you think twice before you retire early“. This post in fact was a guest post from a Senior Tax Analyst for H&R Block Canada.

My Own Advisor wrote an article titled “Get your Financial House in Order or Keep Dreaming“. What I liked about this article is the fact that although what has been said does sound a bit grim, you feel a bit comforted knowing that in the end there is always room to improve your financial health.

Sustainable Personal Finance wrote a great article on Preparing to File Taxes in Canada. This is a great post, especially for people filing their taxes for the first time.

On Young and Thrifty I came across an article titled “Why and How to DRIP: Dividend Re-Investment Plans“. In this article, you are given the pros and cons of this investment and how you can invest in this product.

As some people might remember, just over a month ago I had some issues depositing a cheque into my bank account; in my opinion TD was wrongfully holding my cheque. I did get the money deposited, but it was a lot more of a hassle than it should have been.

That being said, it came to my attention from a friend of mine that when he went to deposit a cheque, she was told that it had to be put on hold, regardless of who it is from.

Now, I say, “who it is from” because it was not an issue of whether the account sees a lot of cheque deposits or not, or the history on the account. It was more on where the cheque was coming from.

Who was the cheque from?

The cheque was from none other the Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP). My friend was confused to say the least; not only has she deposited OSAP cheques in the past, but the hold were being placed on a government cheque.

After hearing that her OSAP cheque was being held, only one thing came to mind as to why this could happen; and that is cheque fraud. I can only imagine how many cases their could be; realistically not many people would contest a government cheque.

I decided to ask a bank employee about this case, and he explained that it is common for cheque fraud to occur on those kind of cheques, and it is common practice to hold the cheques.

Now if this was me, I would have not allowed my money, which is going towards my education to be put on hold; realistically, why should I be forced under scrutiny for a cheque from the government because other people might be committing cheque fraud.

On a side note, the bank that my friend banks with is none other than TD; I found it funny how my friend is also facing some problems with TD like I did.

What could you do to avoid your OSAP cheques form being held?

The solution to avoiding your OSAP cheques from being held is to have it directly deposited into your bank account.

This way, your void any potential fraud issues with your bank, as your OSAP will not come in a cheque form.

For anyone looking to have direct deposit for their OSAP, you will need to show the financial aid office your bank information so that they can direct deposit your funds into your bank account.

What do you think of OSAP cheques being held?

A few weeks ago the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Shoppers Drug Mart launched a new national program, where clients will be able to now collect Shoppers Optimum points through the use of a brand new RBC Shoppers Optimum banking account and debit card.

That being said, today I will give an overview on what you can expect to find this account to include when it is launched. The RBC Shoppers Optimum banking account is expected to launch in March 2012.

To get things going, I have compiled a table with what you should see the account features of the RBC Shoppers Optimum Banking account has:

As you can see, this chequing account offers the necessities and an additional benefit of allowing clients to earn rewards on purchases inside and outside the store.

How does the rewards program work for this new account?

The rewards program is quite simple; you earn Shoppers Optimum points for every dollar ($1) spent on both inside and outside the store.

The rewards program for the RBC Shoppers Optimum bank account is as follow:

As you can clearly see, the amount of rewards you can earn at Shoppers for their Optimum points is large, well that is once you spend at a Shoppers Drug Mart,

Is the RBC Shoppers Optimum Banking account worth the cost?

Truthfully, I am a person who looks at account fees as a complete waste of money. I mean, there are several no fee accounts that are available which can definitely suit your needs.

However, as with any credit card that has a rewards program on it, the fee is always justified because you are provided with a great rewards program.

In this case, I feel the same way. The Shoppers Optimum rewards program is one of the largest and most popular loyalty programs in Canada. I do not see anyone not wanting to pay the monthly fee if it meant they would be able to increase the amount of Optimum points they can earn.

With that in mind, the monthly fee can be waived through RBC’s multi-product rebate program. In order to qualify for the multi-product rebate program, you will need to hold each of the following products:

• An RBC Royal Bank investment
• An eligible RBC Rewards® credit card
• An RBC Royal Bank residential mortgage or RBC Homeline Plan

Note: Clients, 60 years or older, require only an eligible credit card and investment to qualify for the MultiProduct Rebate.

All RBC accounts come included with Cross Border debit, which makes them great accounts for anyone who frequently travels to the US. That being said, I do not see why the RBC Shoppers Optimum Bank account would not have this feature included. If this account does have this feature, then it only makes it even better in my books.

With the account fee waived, it is more the RBC Shoppers Optimum Banking account is definitely worth the cost.

What do you think of the RBC Shoppers Optimum Banking account?

Last week Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Shoppers Drug Mart launched a new program, which has been launched nation wide that allows Canadians to bank and earn rewards at Shoppers Drug Mart/ Pharmaprix locations throughout Canada.

The new program allows you to use RBC’s new RBC Shoppers Optimum Bank account and debit card to collect Shoppers Optimum points faster than before.

To recap, you are able to earn 10 additional Shoppers Optimum points fore very $1 you spend at Shoppers Drug Mart when using the RBC Shoppers Optimum Bank account.

When you make purchases outside of Shoppers Drug Mart, you earn Shoppers Optimum points on a 1:1 ratio.

RBC also released a great infographic highlighting the new program launched.

As you can see below, 1 in 5 ATM’s are operated by RBC; this is the largest ATM network with more than 50% than its competition. Shoppers Drug Mart has over 1200 stores nationwide, 63 Shoppers Home Health Care stores and 60 Shoppers Simply Pharmacy stores.

This announcement is also coupled with the fact that RBC will be introducing over 300 RBC ATM’s at Shoppers Drug Mart locations, which only further expands RBC’s reach. The fact is, with the amount of stores that Shoppers Drug Mart has, it will only be a matter of time before the 1200+ stores will all hold  an RBC ATM only expanding RBC’s reach even further than its competition.

This new program is set to launch on March 17th, 2012; the RBC Shoppers Optimum bank account will hold a monthly fee of $10.95, and from what I have heard, if you have the RBC’s multi-product rebate, then the account fee is waived.

What do you think of the new RBC and Shoppers program?

PayPal is a service I am sure a lot of you have used over the years, in fact I would not be surprised if the main place you use PayPal is eBay. I know in my case, I created a PayPal account to start purchasing products off eBay.

For anyone who is unsure, PayPal is an e-commerce business that allows payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet.

PayPal functions by you either depositing money onto your account, or having funds be pulled from you bank account, to your PayPal account, and then used for your purchase. It is a great way to make secure payments.

To be honest, I rarely use my PayPal nowadays, I tend to stick with using my credit card.

That being said, it recently came to my attention that PayPal has had a mobile app on the market for some time, which offers a lot of great features for avid PayPal users, and in my opinion can even bring people to want to use it more often.

What does the PayPal mobile app offer?

The PayPal app allows you to send money to your friends, manage your account, and much more. What makes using the PayPal app so ideal is the fact that it is a convenient way to send friends and family money when you need to, especially when you compare it to going to the ATM, writing cheques, etc.

With the PayPal app you can do the following:

• Send money as gifts, or repay a friend, request money (all for Free). When sending money, you have the option of using an email for the recipient or their mobile number.

  

• Split bills and request money at the same time; with this function you can choose to round up/ down the bill total, or leave it as is. From there you can begin requesting money to whoever is part of the bill.

  

• You can collect money for a group gift; you can add notes for the transaction, input the amount of contributors. You can assign names to the contributors (for record keeping purposes), and assign a specific amount of money to each contributor.

  

• Check your account balance, withdraw funds, or view past transactions

  

• Create, track and manage fundraising campaigns

  

• Bump to exchange contacts and send money through Bump

  

As you can see, you can do quite a lot with the PayPal app. To make logging in easier, PayPal has also given you the option to creating pin, which you can use to login to instead of your password and to change your login id as your mobile phone number.

Overall, PayPal has created a great app, that if used, can help make managing your finances a bit easier.

However, there is one feature I was a bit disappointed to not find on the PayPal app.

What is the feature that is missing?

On the US version of the PayPal app, there is the option to snap a photo of your cheque to add it directly into your PayPal account (no fees applied). When I first came upon the PayPal app, the feature that caught my eye was this one.

Yes, I know that the downside to this feature is that it is put into your PayPal app but you can always transfer the money to your bank account (there is a wait period, but the convenience of this is good).

I like the idea of depositing cheques with a photo, but I am not too keen on the money being sent to my PayPal account. You can opt to have the money sent to your bank account, but there is a delay in the transfer of funds.

The PayPal app is available to download for the Android, Blackberry and iPhone.

What do you think of the PayPal app?

Recently, a website was brought to BankNerd’s attention, which allows you to create a budget, and manage your finances.

The website I am talking about is called Spendful, and unlike other financial management websites, such as Mint, you are not required to input any sensitive financial information. Spendful is strictly a website that allows you to create and manage a budget.

Spendful believes in the fact that with budgets at your side, you will be able to manage your spending much better and give yourself the peace of mind you need when handling your finances.

How does Spendful work?

Like I mentioned before, Spendful is a website that allows you to create and manage a budget, without the need of putting in any sensitive information (ie. Bank account information, credit card information, etc). As you can see below, Spendful’s budget is a blank slate; you need to manually input your income and expenses for it to track it accordingly.

Spendful requires you to manually input any expenses and income you receive in order for the site to input it into your budget. Once that is done, the website will automatically calculate your finances, and graph it accordingly. As you can see below, I made a Spendful account and inputted a few expenses and income for the money of December.

My total expenses for the month were $1,775; while my total income for the month was $1,900. When you look at the graph, you can see a how my finances fluctuate with both my expenses and income. You will notice that on the graph, there is a darker blue line followed by a lighter blue line. Spendful allows you to input an “Expected” income/ expense and an “Actual” income/ expense. This allows you to properly manage your finances, and also lets you input bills and income at the beginning of the month. When the bill actual comes in, you can input the actual amount with ease.

The graph is a great asset to have, seeing as you can easily highlight a day within the month and see how much money you have at that given moment.

What I really like about Spendful is the fact that the left sidebar has a current balance figure, and an end of the month figure. It allows you to keep track with a glance of how much money you are expected to have at the end of the month. The best part is, it will carry over into the next month, giving you a starting amount as you work your way through the next month. In the end, you can stop worrying about where you money has been going, and know exactly what has been happening with it.

What flaws lies with Spendful?

With any product, you are bound to find some problems with it. Spendful is no different, through playing around with it, I have found several issues that could hinder someone from properly managing their budget. The problems I have found include:

1. Inputting the Actual Income/Expense
   When you go into your budget and begin adding in the actual amount for the income/ expense, you have to not only enter in the amount, but the title of the expense and the date. For me, I feel that it is a given what the title and date of the income/ expense shoudl be. The only thing being entered should actually be the $ value.
2. Graphing issues
   This may just be me, but personally, I do not like the fact that if you do not input an “actual” income/ expense you will have two lines on the graph, a flat line (actual) and a line graphed according to your income/expense (expected). As you can see below, it doesn’t look right (then again it might just be me). I think that there should be a toggle switch, or something that allows you to turn on/ off what you want visible on the graph.
3. Income/ Expense Repeat
   With Spendful, you can select when you want a income/ expense to repeat, but the options are too limited in my opinion. Preferably, I would love to input my income as a bi-weekly occurrence. For bills, it works perfectly, because you can input how long you want to see the expense repeat. If the repeat was brought down to a smaller scale, such as a bi-weekly repeat, then I think it would work out a lot better for some people.
4. Integration with your personal banking
   Although I did state that it is a great idea that you bank account is not synced in anyway with spendful, I am sure there are people out there who would prefer the option. This way, their finances can be tracked further, and of course, it woudl be automatic. The manual entry is great, but as we are all human, mistakes can happen quite easily.
   

These flaws are not something that should deter you from trying it out. The fact is, Spendful is a great way to create and manage a budget. For anyone looking for a budget management tool, Spendful could be the thing you have been searching for.

How do I create a Budget?

Creating a budget is quite easy, in fact it will literally take you 30 – 45 seconds to create a new budget at any given time. To create a new budget, follow the steps below:

1. When you create a new account, you will automatically be taken to the budget creation page. Input Budget Name, select the Currency, choose a starting balance, and determine if you want email reminders. That all there is in creating a new budget.

On another note, Spendful is offering a premium option on the site. The Premium option allows you to :

• Unlimited Budgets
• Set up to 50 years in the future
• no advertisements
• get access to new features first

The cost of the Premium service is either $5/ month or $40/ year. It isn’t a bad option, considering you can make unlimited budgets, personally, I would just use the free service to get a feel for it, and from there move onto the premium service.

What do you think of Spendful?

Several months ago BankNerd ran an article, which pitted two No Fee Chequing account. The two accounts that went against each other were none other than ING Direct’s THRiVE Account and President’s Choice Financial’s no fee bank account.

Both of these accounts are great, and offer a lot, however in the recent months, a new player in the market came into the game. The account I am talking about is none other than the BMO Club Sobeys No Fee Chequing Account.

I decided to put these three bank accounts up against each other and see which come out on top.

To start things off, I compiled a table with the account features these no fee chequing accounts offer:

I am going to try things a bit different this time around; I will use a point system to determine which account comes out on top. For each basic account feature, the respective account will earn +1; for basic account features that offer more than normal, it will be +2. Other features such as mobile banking and rewards will earn +2.

That being said, you will find that the THRiVE Chequing account gets a score of 15, President’s Choice Financial gets a score of 13, while the BMO Club Sobey’s no fee chequing account gets a score of 14.

Based on scores alone, the THRiVE chequing account comes out on top, beating BMO Club Sobey’s by 1 point due to the fact that with Email Money Transfers, you have an option of sending a free email money transfer or use Interac email money transfers for $1.00 per transaction.

What are the differences between these accounts?

Personally, the ability to have cheques for free is not a deal breaker for me. ING does offer you a free set of a cheques, but that’s only for your 1st book. President Choice Financial allows you to write cheques without having to buy any cheque books. After your first free book of cheques, ING offers 50 cheques at a cost of $12.50. Now with the BMO Club Sobeys account your first book is free, and every set of 50 cheques after will cost $9.95. Obviously, getting your cheques for free is the ideal option, but the next best option would have to be the BMO Club Sobeys account seeing as it is almost $3 less than ING’s

Ususally, with no fee chequing accounts, I find that ATM access tends to differ from traditional banks. With ING , you will find that they offoffers ATM access through the Exchange Network, while President’s Choice Financial offers ATM access through CIBC ATMs and President’s Choice Financial bank machines.Now with BMO Club Sobeys you will have access through the BMO network. Regardless, ATM access is not a problem for any of these no fee chequing accounts.

A major difference I find between these three accounts is the overdraft protection. ING offers Whoops! Protection, which allows account holders to have up to $250 in overdraft protection. You do not have to make any interest or fees for 30 days, however if you fail to bring your account balance to a positive balance by 30 days you have to pay $2.50. The BMO Club Sobeys account does offer an overdraft protection at a monthly cost of $2.50, however the minimum overdraft protection is $50, and can reach a maximum of $2,500 depending on how much you qualify for. President’s Choice Financial offers up to $5,000 in overdraft protection, and you have to bring the account balance above $0 every 30 days. A minimum charge of $4.97 will apply each month you use the overdraft. There is also a fixed rate of 10% per annum that is applied on the overdraft balance.

What kinds of rewards can these no fee chequing accounts earn?

ING offers account holders to earn interest of their account, while both BMO Club Sobeys and President’s Choice Financial offer rewards program, but even then they are quite different.

President Choice Financial offers a rewards program with their no fee chequing account. With this rewards program you earn points that can be redeemed towards free groceries; once you have a minimum of 20,000 PC Points (equivalent to $20) you can begin redeeming.

You can earn rewards by:

With BMO Club Sobeys you can either AIR MILES reward miles or Club Sobeys rewards.

You can do this by:

In regards to the Club Sobeys points, you can earn a maximum of 3,000 Club Sobeys points per year. With the AIR MILES reward miles, you can earn up to a maximum of 125 AIR MILES reward miles per year.

Are there any mobile apps for these banks?

Currently, ING is the only one out of these two banks to offer a mobile banking app that gives users access to their no fee chequing accounts.

ING’s mobile banking app allows account holders to check their account balances, review transactions, transfer funds, locate ATMs and much more. One of the newer features are in fact the Orange Snapshot, this feature allows clients to keep track of your spending anywhere. It gives you instant access to your Account balances, history, pending transactions and ING Direct Rates. With Orange Snapshot, clients can quickly and securely access their account information in a read-only manner. After registering for Orange Snapshot (this is done straight from their mobile app), you can keep track of you finances at any given time of the day.

The best part of being partnered with BMO (in my opinion) is the fact that they already have a mobile banking app already created for clients to use. That being said, the BMO mobile app offers everything you can possibly need to get your basic bankign done, which includes the latest addition of the bill payment feature. Although it was a bit shaky at first, their app is slowly becoming a lot better and offering features that people need to use on a daily basis.

Which of these accounts is the best?

Going by the simple rating system, ING and BMO Club Sobeys get the highest score, however I always find that no matter how much you try to generalize something, it can vary from person to person.

President’s Choice Financial’s no fee chequing account is definitely something that an avid shopper at loblaw’s should own seeing as they can earn a ton of reward points that way.

BMO Club Sobeys in my opinion suits people who want to collect AIR MILES reward miles or Club Sobeys rewards.

ING Direct offers an account that lets you earn interest on your money, allowing you to continue saving despite using a chequing account.

Now there is another advantage to using the BMO Club Sobeys account, and that is the fact that you are given access to BMO MoneyLogic, an online financial management tool. With BMO MoneyLogic at your side, you are able to keep track of your finances with BMO Alerts and create and manage budgets. That being said, the fact that you are given this tool, I added an extra point to BMO Club Sobeys’ score.

Choosing between these accounts are not easy, but regardless of who you go with, you can guarantee on having no fee banking, and an account that offers you a form of rewards that you can benefit from.

 Which no fee chequing account would you get?

Over the past few months I have been writing on a series of articles that aims to deliver an account overview of the various student accounts banks have to offer.

In the past, I have covered the TD Canada Trust Student Account, the RBC Student Account and most recently the CIBC Advantage for Students Account.

Today I plan on covering the Scotiabank Student Banking Advantage Plan, which offers a few features that no other banks have.

To start things off, I have compiled what Scotiabank has to offer students in the table below:

*Withdrawals (including ABM), Transfers, Pre-authorized payments, Bill payments, Debit purchases

What makes this account worth having?

As you can see the cost of having this account is $1.25/ month, however it can be waived if you can keep a $2,000 minimum daily balance. The thing this, I do not see too many students keeping such a high balance.

You do get unlimited transactions, which is a great feature for anyone to have, especially students.

What sets this student account apart from the competition?

One notable feature that the Scotiabank Student Banking Advantage Plan has that no other bank has to offer is the fact that you can have a SCENE ScotiaCard as your debit card.

What this means is that you can earn SCENE points, which can ultimately be used towards getting free movies and more at Cineplex Entertainment theatres and more.

When you open a new SCENE eligible bank account, you automatically earn up to 2000 SCENE points with your first purchase. This entitles you to redeem 2 free movie immediately.

The SCENE point system allows you to earn 1 SCENE point for every $5 spent, and 5 SCENE points for every $1 spent at participating Cineplex Entertainment theatres.

Another feature that Scotiabank has that no other bank in Canada currently offers is Interac Flash. The new ScotiaCard comes equipped with Interac Flash, which allows you to make contactless payments with your debit card. That being said, you would need to be at an establishment that accepts these kinds of payments.

The Scotiabank Student Banking Advantage Plan is a great account and with the added features, it makes it worth paying the small monthly fee of $1.25/ month.

What do you think of the Scotiabank Student Banking Advantage Plan?

image source: El Ángel Exterminador