Earning Aeroplan Points on Your Mortgage: What Chexy's 1:1 Rate Actually Costs

A $3,800 mortgage payment in Toronto puts $3,800 into the lender's account and $66.50 into Chexy's. What you're getting for that $66.50 depends entirely on whether you know what an Aeroplan point is actually worth.

Chexy, the fintech that built its name letting renters pay landlords by credit card, now lets Canadian homeowners do the same thing with their mortgage. The mechanic is simple: you charge your credit card for the full mortgage amount, Chexy takes the money and forwards it to your lender by EFT. You earn 1 Aeroplan point per dollar. Chexy charges 1.75% to make it happen.

The question isn't whether the points are real. They are. The question is whether 1.75 cents is a fair price for 1 Aeroplan point.

Where the Math Breaks Even

Aeroplan points have a floor value and a ceiling value. The floor is what you get redeeming for gift cards or merchandise, which is closer to 0.9 cents per point. Terrible deal. The ceiling is what sharp points users extract on business-class flights to Europe or Asia, which can hit 2.1 cents per point if you book well and time it right.

Most people live in the middle: 1.4 to 1.7 cents per point on economy flights to sun destinations or short-haul North American routes. If you're getting 1.5 cents, you're breaking even against Chexy's fee. If you're getting 1.7 cents, you're ahead by about $5.70 per thousand dollars paid. On a $4,000 monthly mortgage, that's $22.80 per month, or $273.60 per year.

For someone who knows how to book Aeroplan flights and actually uses the points, that's defensible. For someone who lets points expire or redeems them poorly, it's a loss.

Where the Strategy Actually Works

The real use case isn't monthly mortgage payments. It's minimum spend requirements on premium cards.

The TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite Privilege, for example, requires $5,000 in spending within 90 days to unlock a 90,000-point welcome bonus. If your regular monthly spending sits at $2,500, you're short. Put two mortgage payments through Chexy and you're there. The fee on $8,000 is $140. The value of 90,000 Aeroplan points, conservatively, is $1,350. You just paid $140 to unlock $1,350.

That math works. Where it stops working is if you carry a balance. Credit card interest at 19.99% will kill any points arbitrage in about three days. This only makes sense if you're paying the card off in full, every month, no exceptions.

The Cash Flow Dimension

There's a second-order benefit most people miss: float. When you charge your mortgage to a credit card, you're buying yourself 21 to 30 days before the bill is due. For someone managing irregular income, freelancers, commission-based earners, small business owners, that float can smooth out a lumpy cash situation.

Chexy isn't advertising this angle because it sounds like "we help you go into debt," but the reality is that a planned, short-term float is a liquidity tool. Using it to avoid an NSF fee or cover a gap between invoice payment and mortgage due date is legitimate cash flow management.

Where it becomes dangerous is if the float turns into revolving debt. The line between tactical liquidity and structural insolvency is thinner than most people think.

The Downside No One Mentions

Some card issuers code these transactions as cash-like, which means no points and immediate interest. Chexy works to prevent this by structuring payments as "recurring services," but not every issuer treats them the same way. Before running $50,000 through the platform, confirm with your card issuer that the transaction will earn points and won't be treated as a cash advance.

Chexy is registered as a Money Services Business with FINTRAC, which provides regulatory oversight, but that doesn't protect you from a merchant category code mismatch that costs you six months of points.

For homeowners who redeem Aeroplan efficiently and pay their cards in full, the 1.75% fee is a fair price. For everyone else, it's a tax on optimism.