These are marketing exercises. Tangerine Bank's parent, Bank of Nova Scotia, has a AA DBRS debt rating. It doesn't need to pay junk bond rates, direct or indirectly, for short term deposits.

There's likely a marketing budget for a certain number of 3.9% offers and a certain number of 4.5% offers. The offers are randomly distributed to some in a pool of customers who have shown interest in such unadvertised offers.

One person filed a complaint a while back about these unadvertised targeted offers. The bank explained that there is randomness in how the offers are given out.

Alexandre said

Probably some algorithm where bank enters "Amount of new money we want to raise" and it plays with interest rates until funds goal is achieved. Maybe even some sort of AI.

I had 4.0% promo which ended on August 31st. I promptly moved my funds out by the end of August. You just got 3.9% promo starting in September. If you deposit funds, it is win-win situation for you (really nice HISA rate) and for bank (have to pay 0.1% interest less to you vs. they paid me).  

Same here, but got no new offer on Sept. 5th as other folks. The guess is that they target for large balances.

whyz said
Tangerine has removed the option to manually create a link to an external account.
It was replaced with Plaid.

I tried linking an account from FI that is not known to Plaid/Flinks, on EQ and on Tangerine web sites.
EQ flatly refused, telling to call customer support. Tangerine switched me to manual method and allowed to link account with their old microdeposits method.

I like Tangerine approach better. It is also better for Tangerine, because calls to customer support are expensive.

I'm on a lousy/laughable 0.35/0.75/1.75% Tier Dec 10 to Sep 30. The account balance on the affected accounts has been $1 since Dec 10 2025. And, that remain as is until something not laughable is offered.

corms said
Was offered 3.9%. Would be neat to know the way the rates are determined.  

Probably some algorithm where bank enters "Amount of new money we want to raise" and it plays with interest rates until funds goal is achieved. Maybe even some sort of AI.

I had 4.0% promo which ended on August 31st. I promptly moved my funds out by the end of August. You just got 3.9% promo starting in September. If you deposit funds, it is win-win situation for you (really nice HISA rate) and for bank (have to pay 0.1% interest less to you vs. they paid me).

Would be neat to know the way the rates are determined.

Warwick111 said
Got the same offer too. My previous offer @ 4.25% expired on August 31 and I did not expect a back to back offer. I emptied out my accounts on Sept 1 and now the money is coming right back.  

That's a bit unusual, typically there's a month's gap in between. I would have done the same thing as you had by withdrawing everything out on Sept 1 to squeeze out as much interest as possible and then waited to see if they would target again in October. The snapshot for this offer was the 4th so it worked out well for you.

hwyc said
Got 4.5% (YMMV) on new money from Sep 5 to Nov 30
Activation required by Sep 30  

Got the same, I thought they would have started their targeting either yesterday or wait until Tuesday. Surprised they did it on a Saturday, but not surprised they upped their game to 4.5% considering the volatility in global bond markets where paying that much is cheap compared to what they would have to pay borrowing from elsewhere. Anyone considering jumping into GIC's right now is better off holding off if they can for better rates that are likely coming sooner rather than later.

Top Dogg said Shakepay where they're offering a 5% interest rate.  

Their Cash account said 3% paid in crypto.