The Best US Bank Accounts for Canadians

If you’ve been collecting points exclusively in Canada, the allure of US credit cards has probably piqued your interest. The vibrant American credit card market is full of high-value offers, and indeed many of them are accessible to us Canadians if we put in the work. 

Opening a bank account in the US is an essential first step of your US credit card journey. Let’s take a look at some of the best US bank accounts available to Canadians, while considering the unique challenges that we face in playing the game from north of the border.

Canadian Bank Partners in the US

To pay your US credit card bill, you need a US dollar account at a US-based institution.

Now, Canada’s Big 5 banks – BMO, CIBC, RBC, Scotiabank, and TD – all offer Canadian-domiciled US dollar accounts. However, you generally can’t pay your US bills from these accounts for two reasons.

First, you can’t make a “push” payment, as a bill payment initiated by the bank. For the most part, Canadian banks and bill payment services don’t have US credit card issuers, or any other US billers, listed as payees. 

Second, you can’t make a “pull” payment, as in a pre-authorized payment initiated by your US credit card issuer. The Canadian and US banking systems use different formats for routing numbers to facilitate inter-bank payments, and one won’t work with the other. US credit card issuers are only able to pull from US routing numbers.

You can also pay cross-border bills with a bank draft, but that method is prohibitively expensive, slow, and at a poor exchange rate.

Instead, it’s necessary to open a US-domiciled account, buy and transfer US currency at an acceptable rate, and make US-dollar payments to US payees from there.

Luckily, most of Canada’s major banks have counterparts over the border. If you already bank with one of them here, it’s easy to open an account with their American partner institution. You can apply as a Canadian, and you don’t need any US identification to be eligible.

These American divisions are targeted at Canadians who split time in both countries, have recently moved south, or otherwise have strong connections on both sides of the border. In any event, assuming you only use the account as a staging area for bill payments and don’t need extensive US banking features, any of these basic checking accounts will get the job done.

TD Bank

TD Canada Trust is partnered…