Tims® Credit Card Review

Tim Hortons (Tims) Credit Card Review

The Tims Credit card is the only Non-Secured Credit card offered by Tims Financial. In this comprehensive review we will go into the details of this card and whether it's a good choice for you or not.

The Rewards

How You Earn Rewards

You may earn rewards on your purchases as:

• 5 points for every dollar in Groceries (Excluding Walmart and Costco), Gas & EV, Transit, Taxi & Ridesharing and Tim Hortons up to 100000 points per year

• 0.5 point for every dollar on everything else

We will discuss the redemptions in the next section in full detail. Basically, you can redeem your Tims points for anywhere between 0.4 cents per point up to 0.6 cents per point.

Let's assume you are maximizing the value of your points and get 0.6 cents when redeeming and then run the calculations.

For the categories that give you 5 points, the value of the 5 points would equal $0.03 (Equal to 3% cashback) for every dollar of purchase. For a points card, that cashback equalant is on the lower side. That's because there are many points card options that could give you a higher percentage return on your purchases.

There are even cashback cards that could match 3% on the categories, so it does not totally make sense to go for the Tim Hortons Credit card when you can get a cashback card that gives you full control over how you want to redeem your points.

The worst part is everything else purchased outside of those categories. 0.5 points for every dollar spent would be roughly equal to $0.003 (Equal to 0.3% cashback), one of the lowest cashback rates in all credit cards in Canada.

We made all these assumptions with the maximization of the points value, and the numbers for the rewards for this card were still very disappointing. Even at Tim Hortons itself, many other cards would beat Tims credit card on how much you can earn on your purchases. So this card gets a fail from FinlyWealth for its bad reward program.

This would have been a much better card if they either increased the reward rate of their other categories or added some more popular categories like food and restaurant or recurring purchases to the 5-point earning rate categories. Not counting Walmart and Costco, which is one of the reasons people might get a Mastercard in favor of a Visa card, does not help this card's case either.

As always, if your main goal is to maximize your rewards, don't forget to use Finly's calculator to find the best card suited for you.

How You Redeem Rewards

Tims rewards could be redeemed for items at Tim Hortons for different food items.

Redeeming for different items could give you different values. In general, the redemption value of each point is anywhere from around 0.4 cents up to 0.6 cents.

Looking at a few examples at reward levels for finding the best redemption:

It looks like the Coffee and the second redemption Tier will give you the best value when redeeming your points at Tim Hortons!

Welcome Bonus

You can earn up to $ 10,000 points easily if you spend over $200 monthly on your card.

4000 points are awarded when you get the card, and 2000 points are awarded in months 2,3 and 4 when you spend over $200.

1 benefit of Tims Card

1. Easy approval

One good thing about the Tims card is that it doesn't have high application requirements. No income requirements and a good credit score are all that is needed to get this card.

3 downsides of Tims Card

1. Low cashback rate

In general, the cashback rate on groceries, transportation, and Tim Horton purchases is okay but still not the best. Given that this is a points-based card, in general, it should have a return than a cashback card because the points could be only redeemed in a certain way.

That's not the case for Tims, and there are many cards that will have better rewards compared to the Tims card. Use Finly's calculator to find those cards.

The reward rates in categories other than the ones mentioned are very bad. Almost 0.3%, which is one of the worst among all credit cards in Canada.

Because of the items mentioned, Tims card is not the best card to gather rewards with for most people.

2. Very minimal benefits

Almost most credit cards in Canada provide Purchase protection and extended warranty. Tim Hortons credit card also provides.

Better cards, even some of the free ones, offer something in addition to these two, like No foreign transaction fee, Roadside assistance, etc. Tim offers no extra benefits like these.

In addition, purchase protection and extended warranty for some cards cover up to $50K, but Tims only covers $1K, which is a much lower limit compared to the others. So even the two benefits it offers are not as good as the rest.

Because Tims does not have any additional benefits and the ones that have a very low limit, it gets a low score on benefits from Finlyweath.

Final Verdict

We do not recommend this card to be your main card. There are many better credit cards to use, even at Tim Hortons itself, that will give you more rewards than the Tims Card!

The rewards are not that great, and the benefits are neither. So whether you are getting a free or paid card, we don't recommend the Tims cards as your main card to you.