Credit cards for temporary residents on a work permit? | Credit card reward programs | Discussion forum

Not possible for the most part (a few exceptions perhaps for those who can plead use of a US credit rating with, for example, Amex or Capital One). One must have a credit rating and track record to get anything other than a pre-paid card. If TFWs have a Cdn banking account, they would simply use debit.

A pre-paid VISA card isn't much different than a debit card, but it might get you a hotel room, which a debit card won't.
But, really, why should a Canadian financial institution give a credit card to someone who has no permanent ties or, presumably, significant assets here? You could be gone at any moment, leaving debts in your wake.

Temporary Foreign Workers, as I understand it, are more limited, generally less skilled and more temporary or seasonal. They come from a number of countries that are not necessarily in NAFTA or its successor, e.g. Thailand, Jamaica.

Someone coming as a professional from a NAFTA country can and probably does have credit cards issued in their home country - and, in the case of the US at least, probably gets better benefits from them than they would from a Canadian card!

OP did not specify which category of foreign workers. Typically, unsecured Canadian credit cards are only issued to Canadian citizens or permanent residents.

RetirEd said
I think it's criminal that issuers of secured credit cards don't pay interest on their secured deposits, less the amounts charged for a period.
RetirEd  

Surely you jest! If they had to pay interest on them, they wouldn't issue them! Interest is a one-way street.

Same goes for gift cards or whatever euphemism they are using these days to avoid regulations. Some of them deduct generously from the card's value when you don't use them up promptly.

But since you are on such good terms with Peoples, why don't you ask them about it? Cards seem to be a big part of their business.