There are cards that get put in a drawer, and cards you actually keep in your wallet for years. The Passport is the second kind. It’s the one I reach for when the only questions are what to use abroad and which card gets me into a lounge.
It does two unglamorous things well: no foreign transaction fee on anything you buy in another currency, and six airport lounge passes a year. Pair that with up to 3x Scene+ points on groceries, 2x on global dining, and a free travel eSIM, and you have about the closest thing Canada has to a default travel card.
Welcome offer
The Scotiabank Passport Visa Infinite+ is currently offering up to 60,000 Scene+ points, roughly $600 in travel value.
You'll earn 40,000 Scene+ points after spending $2,000 in the first three months. Then, you can earn an additional 10,000 Scene+ points after spending $10,000 in the first six months. Finally, the card offers an ongoing annual spend bonus: you can earn 10,000 Scene+ points each year after spending $40,000.
The first tier does the heavy lifting: 40,000 points for $2,000 in 90 days is easily cleared by routing rent-adjacent bills, insurance renewals or a flight you were buying anyway through the card. The later tiers reward spend you’d likely do regardless.
Fees & eligibility
The Passport runs $150 a year, with no first-year waiver. Scotia is betting (correctly, for most people) that the lounge passes and FX savings cover it. Your first supplementary card is free, and each additional one is $50. As a Visa Infinite+ product it requires a personal income of $60,000 or household income of $100,000.
There is also a way to skip the fee entirely: pair the card with a Scotiabank Ultimate Package chequing account and Scotia rebates the full $150 annual fee each year (the rebate covers up to $150 on one eligible card). The account itself runs $30.95 a month unless you keep a $6,000 daily balance in it, so this pays off best if you were going to park that money at Scotia anyway.
Earning rewards
Scene+ earning here is refreshingly flat: no rotating calendars and nothing to activate. The best rate is at the grocery store, where a partnership with the Empire group earns you 3 Scene+ points per dollar at Sobeys, IGA, Safeway, Foodland, and FreshCo. Groceries at any other store earn 2 points per dollar.
That same 2 points per dollar covers dining, entertainment, and daily transit, and the definitions are generous: entertainment includes movies, theatre, and live performances, while transit covers rail, local transit, taxis, and rideshare services like Uber and Lyft. Everything else earns 1 point per dollar, and the accelerated rates apply on purchases made outside Canada too, which pairs neatly with the no-foreign-fee benefit.
One honest note: if groceries and dining are your biggest categories, the Scotiabank Gold American Express earns more there, at 5 to 6 Scene+ points per dollar. The trade-off is acceptance, since it is an American Express rather than a more widely taken Visa. Plenty of people keep the Passport as their everyday Visa and reach for a higher-earning card only where it is accepted.
Redeeming rewards
Scene+ is one of the most flexible fixed-value programs in Canada. Every 100 points is worth $1, and the standout feature is how you spend them on travel: there is no in-house portal you are forced to book through. You charge a travel expense to the card, then redeem points to offset that charge, any time up to 12 months after the purchase posts.
That freedom matters more than it sounds. Most other bank programs make you book flights, hotels, and car rentals inside their own travel agency at the rates they set. Scene+ lets you book directly with the airline, hotel, train operator, or vacation rental you actually want, then erase the cost with points, right down to the taxes and fees on an award ticket.
Booking direct has a second payoff: you keep full elite-status credit with the travel provider, and the purchase stays covered by the card's insurance (outlined below). Points never expire while you hold the card, and if you ever cancel, you have 60 days to use them before they are gone.
Perks & benefits
The headline perk is the one Scotia buries in the fine print: six complimentary airport lounge visits a year through the Visa Airport Companion Program (powered by DragonPass). That’s a lounge pass for roughly every trip the average Canadian takes, worth more than the annual fee on its own. Since the 2026 Visa Infinite+ refresh it also bundles a genuinely useful travel extra: a complimentary 10GB GigSky eSIM data plan, good for 15 days a year, so you land abroad already connected instead of hunting for a SIM.
Closer to home, a 2026 Scene+ partnership with Shell adds an everyday win: link the card to a Shell Go+ account and you save 3 cents per litre on any fuel grade, plus an extra 4 cents per litre on Shell V-Power through June 2027. The instant discount is the real draw, because gas is not a Passport bonus category, so the card itself earns just its base 1 Scene+ point per dollar on the fuel. If you spend heavily on gas, the Scotiabank Gold American Express earns 3 points per dollar there and makes a good companion card.
Insurance
For a $150 card the insurance is genuinely deep, headlined by up to $2 million in emergency medical for the first 25 days of a trip (just the first 3 days once you turn 65, with a paid extension available for longer trips). For short getaways it quietly replaces a standalone travel policy, though older travellers and anyone taking a longer trip should read the age and duration limits closely.
My take
I've carried this card for years and it's the one I always carry in my wallet, home and abroad.
The Passport isn’t flashy. It won’t win a points-per-dollar drag race against the Cobalt, and the welcome bonus won’t turn heads if you’re chasing a big one-time sign-up offer. What it does is quietly remove two recurring annoyances from travel: the foreign-fee tax and the “do I really pay $40 for a lounge day pass?” question. All for a fee you forget you’re paying. If you only keep one travel card, this is the boring, correct answer.
The good
- No FX fee on anything
- Six lounge passes a year
- 3x Scene+ on groceries
The catch
- No first-year fee waiver
- Scene+ tops out around $1 per 100 pts