What a policy rate change does to your credit card balance
The Bank of Canada moves the policy rate eight times a year. Most credit card interest does not move with it, and the reason matters more than the headline.
2 min readEach figure carries its own date
Current figures
- 2.25%
- 4.45%
Bank of Canada, as at September 30, 2026. Removed automatically if the source goes stale.
The Bank of Canada sets its target for the overnight rate on eight fixed dates a year, published a year in advance. The current target and the prime rate the chartered banks administer alongside it are shown above.
Coverage of those days tends to run straight from the announcement to your wallet. For a mortgage that link is real. For most credit cards it is not.
Most card interest is fixed, not floating
A variable-rate product moves when prime moves. Most Canadian credit cards do not work that way. They carry a stated annual interest rate that changes when the issuer decides to change it, which is a commercial decision, not a mechanical consequence of a Bank of Canada announcement.
That is why a rate cut can arrive and the interest on a carried balance stays exactly where it was. It is also why the announcement is the wrong thing to watch if what you actually want to know is what your balance costs.
What to watch instead
The number that decides what a carried balance costs you is the purchase interest rate on your own card, and the only reliable place to read it is your statement or the issuer's disclosure. On this site every card's stated rate renders from our catalogue rather than from prose, so the figure in a table is the figure we hold on record.
A worked example is more useful than a general rule. If you carry a balance on a card at a stated rate, the interest accrues on that rate regardless of what the Bank did that morning. Comparing your rate against the low-interest cards in the ranking is a more direct saving than tracking the policy rate ever will be.
Where the rate on this page comes from
The policy and prime figures above are read from the Bank of Canada's Valet API, stored with the date the Bank assigns them, and shown only while they are current. If our connection to that source lapses, the figures disappear from this paragraph rather than freezing at an old value.
That is a deliberate choice. A number that quietly stops updating is worse than no number, because it still looks authoritative.
Keep reading
Put this against your month
What is left to spend this month?
Every guide here ends in the same place: the month you can actually check.
No account. Nothing you type is sent to us.