Welcome Bonus Eligibility Rules by Issuer: What Actually Disqualifies You

Before you time an application around a big welcome offer, it helps to know which "you can't get this bonus again" rules are real, published policy — and which are internet folklore repeated so often it sounds official. The gap between the two is bigger than most guides let on. Here's what we could actually verify, issuer by issuer, as of July 2026.

American Express: the one rule that's genuinely official

Amex is the only major Canadian issuer with a written once-per-lifetime welcome-bonus restriction (TD has a written rule too, but with a 12-month reset rather than a lifetime one — see below). Its offer terms state that welcome bonuses are only available to applicants who have not previously held that exact card product — in Amex's own language, offers are "only available to new Cardmembers" of that product. The restriction is commonly summarized as a "once-per-lifetime" rule, and it applies separately to each card product — earning the Cobalt bonus doesn't affect your eligibility for the Gold or Platinum bonus.

Two specific, published exceptions worth knowing:

• Business Platinum and Business Gold carry an explicit 90-day rule: apply for one within 90 days of being approved for the other and Amex will automatically decline the application.
• In practice, community reports (not official Amex policy) suggest the "lifetime" restriction can loosen after several years — estimates range from about 3 to 5+ years — but Amex has never published a reset window, so treat any specific number as a guess, not a plan.

TD: the clearest product-specific written rule after Amex

TD's own cardmember terms include a written eligibility clause for its Aeroplan cards: "If you have opened an Account in the last 12 months, you will not be eligible." The TD First Class Travel Visa Infinite carries a related but distinct 6-month rule tied to account closure date. Both are TD's own published language, not community speculation — different TD products are otherwise treated independently of each other.

RBC, CIBC, Scotiabank, BMO: mostly unwritten, and the numbers you'll see online don't agree

This is where guides (including some of ours, until now) tend to overstate confidence. Here's the honest state of public information for the other big five:

• RBC: No published per-product bonus-eligibility waiting period. What is real is a general new-application throttle — RBC is widely reported to auto-decline a new application within roughly 90 days of a prior approval, but that's an application-frequency control, not a welcome-bonus rule tied to having held the specific card before.
• CIBC: No official cooling-off period is published. CIBC may decline applicants who've opened several CIBC products in a short window, but there's no stated number of days or months.
• Scotiabank: No official waiting period appears in Scotiabank's published terms. You'll see community estimates anywhere from about 6 months to 2 years before a cancelled-and-reapplied account is treated as "new" again for bonus purposes — that spread itself is a sign none of those numbers are official policy. Treat a specific figure you read elsewhere as someone's experience, not a guarantee of yours.
• BMO: No standing official waiting period for most cards. BMO's offer terms do exclude reinstated, product-transferred, or already-open accounts from specific promotional bonuses — read the terms of the specific offer, since this is decided offer-by-offer rather than by a blanket policy.
• National Bank: we found no published or reliably reported reapplication rule for National Bank welcome bonuses. If you're planning around one, contact National Bank directly rather than trust a secondhand number — we're not publishing one because we don't have a credible source for it.

Three rules that matter more than the folklore

1. New application vs. product switch are different events. Calling your issuer to move to a different card in their lineup (a "product switch") usually doesn't reset or trigger bonus eligibility the way a brand-new application does — and at several issuers it's treated far more leniently for approval purposes. If you're not sure which one you're doing, ask before you call.
2. A soft check isn't a hard check. Amex's pre-qualification step, where offered, only becomes a hard inquiry once you accept and submit — worth using if you're unsure of your odds and want to protect your credit report from an unnecessary inquiry.
3. Terms change without notice. Every rule above is a snapshot. Issuers update card terms and offer terms regularly, and the community-observed rules for RBC, CIBC, Scotiabank, and BMO were never official to begin with — they can shift for reasons no one outside the bank will announce.

The practical takeaway

If you're optimizing the order you apply for cards in, the only rule you can actually plan around with confidence is Amex's official once-per-product policy and its 90-day Business Platinum/Gold spacing, plus TD's published 12-month Aeroplan clause. Everything else in this space is pattern-matching from other applicants' experiences, not a documented policy — useful context, not a guarantee. When a welcome bonus is central to your math, our welcome bonus valuation guide covers how to price the bonus itself once you know you're eligible for it.

Sourced from Amex Canada's own offer eligibility terms and card-specific offer terms, Prince of Travel's credit card reapplication rules guide (which quotes TD's and RBC's own published/observed terms directly), and Churn's Canadian issuer rules roundup for the community-observed figures we've explicitly flagged as unofficial. Verified July 16, 2026 — issuer terms change without notice; confirm current eligibility on the issuer's own application page before relying on any rule above, official or observed.