What is the best credit card for people with a thin credit file in Canada?
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The best card for people with a thin credit file in Canada depends on your exact spending and credit. The shortlist above holds 6 cards for this profile, each chosen because it fits people with a thin credit file: cards for someone with a short or sparse credit history — an existing but limited file — that add a new tradeline, report monthly, and thicken a file so lenders can finally score it well.
How did you choose these cards for people with a thin credit file?
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These picks come from dedicated research for people with a thin credit file, 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.
Why do some cards show no annual fee figure?
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Because we hold no confirmed figure for it. Our fee column used to default to zero, and many cards still carry a zero that no check has confirmed — so a zero on its own cannot be told apart from a field nobody filled in, and printing “C$0” there would invent a price. A card shows a fee where a positive one is on record, or where a zero was confirmed against the issuer's terms; otherwise the slot reads “Not confirmed”, and the issuer's own page is the place to check before you apply.
How are these cards ranked?
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In the research's order. The figures on each pick come from our catalogue, and each card's review page marks which of them a published document states.