Originally Posted by
tom911
I see you're Canada-based. Can you clarify which card (debit, credit) hits you with the 19.5% interest? Is it, like Fredd suggests, a cash advance on a credit card? I've only done that once in the last 20 years in Sweden when the ATM network was down and I needed immediate cash. Strictly for emergencies.
Since a debit card is drawn against money in an account, there can't be an interest charge. As for credit cards (in Canada), all the ones that I know have an interest-free period of about one month for purchases (if you have no balance owing from the previous month) but charge interest immediately for cash advances. And each card with each bank has its own rate. Also, CIBC has acquired Citibank's cards and TD has acquired MBNA's cards from Bank of America. As a point of information, TD has acquired lots of US retail banks and has lived by its acronym, like IBM. In Canada, we know they're Toronto-Dominion (a merger of the Bank of Toronto and the Dominion Bank of Canada). Even more shocking, CIBC is the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. That one would play well in Zucotti park.