Why are USD accounts so bad or non-existent in Canada?

Building Neo
1

U.S. Dollar is the moss popular currency in the world, but for some reason Canadian financial institutions seem to struggle with it. Why?

• Scotia offers a USD account with TWO transactions a month (lol)

• Wealthsimple now offers a USD savings account – users can store USD but can’t pay in USD (why?)

• CIBC offers a USD account that requires a U.S. credit check (why?)

• RBC offers something, but it’s only free for first year (and is likely offline for 50% of the year for scheduled maintenance);

• TD offers something with some weird transfers between Canadian and U.S. TD banks, minimum balances and a limit on how much money you can send between your own accounts.

• EQ has a USD account that you can’t withdraw cash from (??)

• Simplii and Tangerine offer a USD account, but it is a savings account that you can’t do much with

• Neo doesn’t offer anything USD at all.

I am curious why can’t there be a normal USD account to do whatever people want to do with their U.S. dollars that does not require weird gymnastics?

2

Hi @Paul! Just wanted to jump in and share that USD accounts and international transfers are on our long term roadmap. So this is definitely on our radar!

I will be sending you a DM to get your info to add you to our follow-up list and we’ll keep you updated when the changes go live!

3

+1 i’d also like to see better USD accounts or any other foreign currency account

4

Why? What’s the value for you? A little more context can help us prioritize features like this!

6

Because Canadian dollar is useless outside of Canada. I just want to have a normal USD account that I can use to pay, send and receive money, invest etc. Right now I can’t even move USD from one bank to another within Canada without paying a bunch of fees or losing money by exchanging back and forth. And when you have money in old school banks, there is either very low or no interest + no real ability to invest or pay. This is very inconvenient.

7

Here’s an example

I have my business accounts with Venn.ca (great SMB fintech btw. Must be incorporated Venn - Sign Up) and one of thier many great features is that I have a CAD USD GBP EUR account. I can send and recieve payments from them at no cost and conversion is 0.45%. Can bypass swift and use ach and efts in the UK (UK FastPay) and the US(FedWire). Saves those pesky 17% surcharges on international transfers, recipients aren’t paying to pick up thier deposits, and it’s super quick

This makes doing cross border business so much easier.

I can also generate virtual ccs and attach them to those accounts (like a debit card). One of the best features for purchasing and travelling in the US or UK.

They also pay 2% on the cad and USD chequeing accounts and are zero fee on thier base package.

Saves me about $1500/yr vs being with BMO