For new immigrants, the best cards are cards for recent immigrants building credit from scratch — issuers that accept an ITIN or passport instead of a local SSN, newcomer banking bundles, and monthly reporting to start a local file. We track 272 Canada cards.
No annual fee and no security deposit either way, so there's no downside to trying StartRight first even for someone from outside the Nova Credit country list.
Application requires an in-person branch visit to confirm newcomer status, similar to Scotiabank and CIBC — not a pure online path.
The one real caveat.
The trade-off — a newcomer already in Canada more than a year should confirm they still qualify before applying.
Best suited to a newcomer whose spending genuinely skews toward groceries and who isn't relying on the card itself to unlock a very high limit.
Every card ranked above this one depends on a specific bank's newcomer program accepting you — which in practice can still involve a branch interview, proof of funds/employment, or a declined application. Home Trust doesn't route through any of that: it's a straight deposit-secured card available to any adult Canadian resident, making it the right fallback for a newcomer whose unsecured newcomer-program application is declined elsewhere, or a deliberate first choice for someone who wants a guaranteed outcome without the uncertainty. The real trade-off versus every card above.
Best positioned as the option for someone with genuinely no savings to put down at all, not a first choice for anyone who can scrape together Home Trust's larger deposit instead.
These picks come from dedicated research for new immigrants, which drew on issuers' published terms and independent sources — listed under “sources” on each pick. The order is the research's. Every fee, welcome offer and earn rate shown on a pick is the figure our catalogue holds for that card, the same one its card page shows. Nothing here is pay-to-rank. Business cards appear only on business guides, student cards only on student guides, and prepaid cards on none. A figure we do not hold is shown as “Not confirmed”, never as a zero. Each researched shortlist is marked as pending editorial review until the site's editor approves it.