Which bank for small business account?

If you don't have a lot of transactions, you can consider:

I went for TD Basic Business Account. They gave a cheque book (10 Cheques) and had a promotion to give a business credit card with annual fees waived. The account cost $5 per month with 5 transactions included (charges for extra transactions).

Only other account that comes close is the RBC one, but extra cheques and credit card with TD was a sweeter deal for me.

I can't recommend BMO. They recently raised rates and minimum balances for their business accounts across the board. They now require a minimum $35,000 balance to waive fees in a basic business chequing account! And even then that doesn't cover all the fees.

Stay away from CIBC.

They are simply not geared up to handle small business accounts and dealing with them has been more than tedious. It's been over a month since we first went into a branch and signed up with them and our overdraft facilities and credit cards are only being finalized now. It has taken my partner and I two trips to the branch and we have to make a third trip this weekend to get all the paperwork signed.

During our first trip, the local financial services rep sat on the phone with someone from small business banking for about 30 mins, filling in their internal online docs while we sat in his office, waiting for them. That visit took over an hour and was a terrible waste of our time. It took the bank two weeks to give us the credit card limits we need. (both partners have excellent credit ratings and are reasonably high net worth individuals) Visa cards take approx two weeks after all the approvals are done, and if this happens without any hiccups, it will be six weeks (and three branch visits by both partners) from our first visit to the time that we can actually use the accounts in the way that we need to.

In contrast, Scotia Bank got a friend up and running in just four days.

I am using the RBC no fee one - gives you only the option of online transactions that helps as my payments are:
1. Payments to CRA
2. Salary Payments - to RBC accounts only

On a second though I might consider Tangerine too in the near future.

OP it depends on how many transactions you are doing, and what do you need for your business.

seymournexus wrote: ↑

Apr 17th, 2017 4:04 pm

When did tangerine get business chequing accounts?

I can see something like Business savings account - won't that fit the bill?

How about making transfers to other personal accounts already in Tangerine. For me its just me and my wife so we can both open accounts there and transfer the money from business to personal ones as required.

Technically if you transfer money from the business to your personal accounts, the company is loaning you money, and it needs to be recorded that way on the books. At some point the CRA might review the terms of such loans.