For students who travel, the best cards are student travel cards with no foreign-transaction fees and travel or dining rewards — built for study-abroad terms and cheap trips, with no annual fee to weigh down a student budget. We track 272 Canada cards.
The best all-around match for a student who actually travels: it's the only card on this list that's both a genuine, guaranteed-approval student product (no income minimum, CIBC underwrites on proof of enrollment) AND earns a real airline-transferable travel currency instead of a generic cash-back or store-loyalty point.
The single highest-value card on this list in raw dollar terms, and the only one that both earns strong dining/grocery rewards AND genuinely eliminates foreign transaction fees. Also worth flagging: Amex acceptance is narrower than Visa/Mastercard both in Canada and at many international merchants, so this persona should carry a Visa/Mastercard backup (e.g. The Aeroplan Visa above or Home Trust below) rather than relying on this card alone while travelling. Best framed as the card to add once a student has income and wants to stop paying the FX tax outright — not necessarily the first card to apply for.
The purest 'no annual fee + no foreign transaction fee' combination that actually exists in the Canadian market today — confirmed on Home Trust's own page: foreign currency is converted at the plain Visa International exchange rate with no added surcharge, and there's no annual fee. Best used as a dedicated 'foreign-currency purchases only' companion card pulled out specifically while studying abroad or travelling, sitting behind one of the points-earning cards above for domestic spend, rather than as a student's only card.
These picks come from dedicated research for students who travel, 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.