OTTAWA - Banking fees in Canada can be hard to see and hard to compare, and the way some fees are structured is part of the reason, a federal review released Friday has found. A Review of Banking Fees in Canada, published by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC), found that the structure of some fees makes banking costs harder for consumers to understand and compare, with implications for affordability and competition.
The Review points to three ways fees can stay out of sight. First, multiple fees can apply to a single transaction, increasing its total cost. Second, foreign exchange and cross-border debit fees can be embedded in the cost of a transaction, making the amount paid in fees less visible. Third, usage-based fees can make costs difficult to predict, particularly when consumers have difficulty tracking how many transactions they have made.
On their own, the Review says, these fees may appear relatively small, but they can add up over time. Without a clear picture of the fees they are paying based on their actual usage, it says, consumers may find it harder to assess the total cost of banking.
For Surrey households, the findings speak to two everyday routines. Many families here send money to relatives in India and elsewhere, and many shop across the border in Blaine and Bellingham, where a debit purchase priced in U.S. dollars can carry a foreign exchange cost that never shows up as a separate line. When the exchange cost is folded into the transaction itself, the visibility problem the Review describes is the same one: there is no easy way to see what the conversion costs, or to compare it against another option.
“Canadians should be able to clearly understand what they are paying for banking services. When fees make the full cost harder to see, it affects both affordability and competition,” Shereen Benzvy Miller, Commissioner of the FCAC, said in the release. More transparency, she said, makes it easier for consumers to compare options and save money, and gives financial institutions stronger incentives to compete for their business.
The Review identifies opportunities to improve fee transparency and to provide more personalized information about the fees consumers have paid over time, changes it says would make it easier to compare products and services. The FCAC says the findings provide evidence for broader policy discussions on transparency, comparability, switching and competition, including the potential benefits of consumer-driven banking.
The Review stops short of issuing a consumer checklist, but its findings point to three habits worth adopting: check a statement for more than one fee attached to the same transaction, ask how the exchange cost on a foreign-currency debit purchase is calculated instead of assuming the posted total is the whole price, and keep count of monthly transactions so usage-based fees do not arrive as a surprise.
Source: Financial Consumer Agency of Canada news release, October 23, 2026
