About PointCrunch
PointCrunch is a blog about credit-card rewards in Canada, written by Kenneth Fu: 10 years working in the financial industry, interested in making the numbers right, and tired of the marketing jargon that hides the actual rewards and numbers from the people using the cards. "5% back" should not turn out to mean $125.
What we do
Banks are very good at describing their own cards. They have the photos, the terms and the marketing budget. What they will never publish is an honest comparison against everyone else's card, or a plain-English reading of their own footnotes. That is the gap this site fills.
Every post takes something people actually decide about, a welcome bonus, a points program, an annual fee, a category of cards, and does the math the way you would if you had a free weekend and a stubborn streak: what lands in your pocket, after the fee, after the caps, on the spending you would do anyway.
How every post is written
Real math, not brochure math. A "5% back" offer that stops at $500 a month is worth about $100 more than a 1% card over three months. We say so, we show the footnote, and we count the annual fee every single time.
Screenshots, not summaries. Every offer we discuss appears as a dated screenshot of the bank's own product page, so you can see exactly what we saw on the day we wrote it. If the offer has changed since, the date tells you to go check.
Nobody pays us. There are no affiliate links, no sponsored rankings and no "partner" cards. When the honest answer is "don't open any of these", we write that.
Every number is traceable. Behind the posts sits a research database of Canadian cards built from the issuers' official pages and cardholder agreements, with sources and last-verified dates. The posts are the readable layer on top of it.
How to read our numbers
- Points are valued at what they buy on a decent flight redemption, about 2 cents each for Aeroplan and Membership Rewards, not at the bank's "up to" figure. Cash them out for gift cards and you will get less.
- "Year one" figures assume you hit the minimum spend and pay the balance in full every month. Carry a balance at 20 to 25% interest and every reward on this site is wiped out.
- Offers change constantly. Confirm the live offer on the bank's page before you apply. Our screenshots tell you when we looked.
What's coming
The blog is the first layer. The card library behind it, one honest page per Canadian card, plus rankings by spending category and a calculator that re-ranks every card on your own budget, are being built in the open and will appear here as they are ready.
Who this is not
PointCrunch is not your financial advisor, broker or lender, and nothing here is personalized financial advice. It is general information from someone who does the reading and shows the math. The right card depends on your spending, your credit and your plans, so treat every post as a starting point and make your own call.
Contact
Spotted a wrong number or a changed offer? Write to hello@pointcrunch.ca. Corrections get fixed and dated.