Canadian Tire 'Money' - Canada's Oldest Loyalty Program

At some point in our lives, we've all had some Canadian Tire ‘money’ in our wallet. As kids we would find it in our parent’s room and use it to play shop with, as adults we save it until we can get a few dollars’ worth to put towards a purchase. Getting that paper piece of ‘money’ back when we make a purchase always seems to make us feel a little better. Canadian Tire money was first introduced in 1958 and has long since become a treasured second currency in Canada; in fact, it’s printed on genuine bank note paper!

Canadian Tire money is the oldest loyalty program in Canada and “pioneered the loyalty program concept”. It was the wife of co-founder A.J. Billes who came up with the idea for the coupon. It originally feature a smiling tire and a dollar sign running hand in hand, which was the Canadian Tire logo dating back to 1926. In 1961 the Sandy McTire character was created by an employee and is still on the ‘money’ today. There are 21 different series of the ‘money’ and it comes in many different denominations: 5¢, 10¢, 25¢, 50¢, $1 and $2. Since its inception, over 1 billion Canadian Tire ‘money’ notes have been in circulation.

There are many charities that accept Canadian Tire ‘money’ and they use it to help fund or buy supplies for their programs. You can even donate your CT points directly to Jumpstart, CT’s charity to help children in need play organised sports. Canadian Tire is very community conscious and will donate 25 points for every 25 points donated to a local community charity to a maximum of 2000 points. Not only to they promote loyalty for their company, but they help out the community in the process.

Through the ‘money’ program, Canadian Tire has promoted customer loyalty and in turn given back more than $100 million dollars every year. They have strived to stay current and in 2000 they introduced the Canadian Tire ‘Money’ on the Card program through the CT Options MasterCard to earn everywhere MasterCard is accepted. The CT Options MasterCard also allows CT to be able to cater to their customer’s needs based on their spending, i.e. you just bought a children’s bike, so here is a coupon for a bike helmet in the mail. It’s incentives like this that keep customers coming back to Canadian Tire. Do you have a CT Options MasterCard to earn points? Have you ever saved up a lot of CT 'money' to buy something good?