Why Canadians Are the Worst-Positioned Expats Financially

Most Canadians do not realize how constrained they are until they leave Canada. Inside the country, the system mostly works. Cards work. Phones work. Banks answer the phone. Platforms stay accessible.

The moment Canadians try to live abroad for any meaningful length of time, the weaknesses described in the previous sections of this toolkit stop being abstract and become personal.

Compared to Americans, Canadians are starting from a structurally weaker position across almost every layer that matters to an expat. Telecom, banking, fintech access, crypto on and off ramps, and platform flexibility all work against them at the same time.

This is not about personal finance habits or income levels. It is about systemic access. And for Canadians abroad, that access is objectively worse.

The easiest place to see the difference is mobile service.

Americans on AT&T's Unlimited Premium plan pay around $86 a month for a single line, or about $51 per line on a family plan. That covers unlimited talk, text, and data across 20 Latin American countries including Mexico, Colombia, Panama, Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil, and most of Central America. No roaming charges. No daily fees. Their phone just works in Medellin the same way it works in Miami.

Canadians get nothing remotely comparable. Rogers charges $15 per day for international roaming outside the US. Bell charges $16. Telus charges $16. Per day. If you spend a month in Colombia, you are looking at $450 to $480 just to keep your phone working normally. Just to receive a text from your bank or take a call from your mother.

We worked with a Canadian who kept her Rogers plan active for the first two months in Panama because she was afraid of missing verification codes from her Canadian bank. By the time she realized how much she was spending, her phone bill was over $900. She canceled the plan, bought a local SIM, and immediately started having problems logging into her TD account because the system flagged her new number as suspicious.

Most Canadians shut off roaming entirely and rely on local SIMs or wifi. The moment they do that, friction appears everywhere. Banks flag logins. Two factor codes fail. Platforms treat the account as higher risk. The Canadian phone number that used to be invisible infrastructure becomes a liability you cannot easily replace.

Before you even get to banking, there is the basic problem of accessing the money you already have.

You are in Panama City and you need cash. You walk to an ATM and withdraw the equivalent of $300 Canadian. Here is what happens:

• Your Canadian bank charges you $5 for the international ATM transaction
• The local ATM charges its own fee - in Panama those fees hit $7 USD per withdrawal
• Your bank applies a currency conversion markup of 2.5 to 3 percent on top of the exchange rate
• That $300 withdrawal just cost you $15 to $20 in fees

Do that a few times a month and you are bleeding $50 to $80 just to access your own money.

Panama has an extra twist. ATMs there cap withdrawals from international cards at $250 USD maximum. So if you need $500, you are paying that $7 local fee twice. Need $1,000 for a rental deposit? Four transactions, four fees. It is a racket that puts money directly into the pockets of Panamanian banks, and there is nothing you can do about it except find a better system.

Colombia is not much better. ATM fees run $5 to $6 USD per transaction. The conversion markup still applies. The math still hurts.

Ohhh Canada. Feel that woe in that "Oh"? You will when you are staring at your fourth $7 ATM fee of the week plus currency conversion plus Canadian bank fees.

Wire transfers are worse. Need to send money to a landlord abroad or pay for something that requires a bank transfer? Canadian banks charge $30 to $50 per international wire, plus receiving fees on the other end, plus unfavorable exchange rates with hidden markups. A $2,000 rent payment can easily cost you $80 to $100 in fees.

Americans paying rent in Panama just transfer USD to USD. No conversion. No markup. Their banks are more tolerant of international activity. Their fee structures are lower. They are not bleeding money every time they touch their own accounts.

Canadians assume that leaving Canada will open up new banking options. In practice, the opposite happens.

Canadian banks are conservative about non-resident clients. Opening new accounts from abroad is difficult. Maintaining existing accounts without a Canadian address becomes harder over time. We've seen cases where someone kept their TD account active for three years while living in Mexico. Then TD sent a letter to the old Canadian address asking to confirm residency. She did not receive it because she no longer lived there. They closed the account 60 days later. Her direct deposits bounced. Her credit card got canceled. She found out when a payment failed.

Unlike Americans, Canadians do not have easy access to US based fintech infrastructure. Mercury, Relay, Lili - all of these are built for US persons or US LLCs. A Canadian can form a US LLC, but banking that LLC is harder than it sounds. Mercury now explicitly rejects registered agent addresses as your principal place of business. Relay requires a physical US address for every business owner. The doors that used to be open are closing.

Local banking in Latin America is rarely available without residency, and residency itself takes time.

In the meantime, Canadians are forced into a narrow corridor of fintech tools that were never designed to be permanent.

Many of the global fintech platforms that expats rely on simply do not prioritize Canada or actively exclude it.

Revolut, which serves Americans and Europeans with multi-currency accounts and competitive rates, does not operate in Canada. Full stop. The regulatory environment is too restrictive and Revolut decided the market was not worth the compliance burden.

Wise works, and thank god for that, but even Wise creates problems for Canadians that Americans do not face. I had a personal Canadian Wise account I had been using for years. When I formed a US LLC for consulting work, I tried to open a Wise Business account for the LLC. Wise rejected it - their system flagged a conflict between my Canadian personal account and the US business account. I could not have both. An American in the same situation would have had no issue because their personal and business accounts would both be US based.

I had to choose. Keep the Canadian personal account and lose access to Wise Business for my LLC, or close the Canadian account and lose my only clean off-ramp from the Canadian banking system. I kept the personal account because there is no other efficient way to get money out of Canada. My LLC now runs through Payoneer, which works but charges higher fees.

This is the kind of structural trap Canadians hit constantly. The tools exist, but they do not work together the way they do for Americans.

Crypto used to be one of the few areas where Canadians had parity with Americans. That window closed fast.

Binance left Canada entirely in 2023, citing regulatory restrictions around stablecoins and investor limits. If you had funds on Binance, you had to withdraw everything by the deadline or watch your account get liquidated.

KuCoin was banned. Bybit followed. OKX restricted services. What remains are regulated domestic exchanges like Bitbuy, Newton, Shakepay, and NDAX. These work for basic buying and selling, but they have higher fees, fewer assets, and limited international flexibility. Try to do anything sophisticated and you hit walls.

For Canadians abroad, this means crypto is no longer a reliable escape hatch. Moving value across borders using crypto now requires more steps, more fees, and more exposure to platform risk than it does for Americans or Latin American residents.

A Canadian entrepreneur living in Paraguay used to move money through Binance P2P with almost no friction. After the ban, he had to route funds through a domestic Canadian exchange, withdraw to Wise, convert to USD, then move to a Latin American fintech that accepts crypto. Three extra steps, three extra fee layers, three extra points of failure. Americans using Coinbase or Kraken do not deal with any of this.

Canadian credit cards are less likely to be accepted abroad without friction. Foreign transaction fees are higher, typically 2.5 to 3 percent on top of conversion. Geo blocking is more common. Customer service response times are slower once you are outside the country.

It is common for Canadian credit cards to get blocked repeatedly abroad. Fraud departments flag international transactions, you call to unblock, they assure you it is fixed, and it happens again. After a few rounds of this, most people give up and switch to a Wise card - which works until that account gets flagged too. Without a backup, you are stuck.

When cards fail, Canadians do not have the same depth of alternatives. Many US issued cards with no foreign transaction fees and global acceptance simply do not exist in the Canadian market. The result is a payment stack that works until it does not, with fewer recovery options when something breaks.

None of this means Americans have it easy. They face FATCA reporting requirements that make some foreign banks refuse them entirely. They deal with platform scrutiny. They have their own compliance headaches.

But Americans start with advantages that compound over time:

• Better telecom through AT&T (20 LATAM countries included)
• Broader fintech access through Mercury, Relay, Wise Business, Airwallex
• More resilient banking rails that tolerate international activity
• Greater tolerance from platforms built around US users and US dollars

When something breaks for an American, there is usually another option. Another platform, another bank, another rail. When something breaks for a Canadian, the backup options are thinner. The margin for error is smaller. The cost of one platform freezing or one account closing is higher because there are fewer places to go next.

This is the part that matters. Canadians are not failing at expat life. The system they are operating inside is narrower and less forgiving.

Americans take for granted that their money moves freely, their phone works internationally, and their banks do not treat foreign activity like fraud. Europeans move money across 30 countries for free with SEPA transfers. Asians have mobile payment systems that work seamlessly across borders. Canadians are operating a financial system designed for 1995 while everyone else moved on.

And here is the bitter irony. Americans, Europeans, UK citizens, Australians, New Zealanders - they all have access to fintech apps that make international money movement simple. Canadians technically fall into the Commonwealth category, but in practice we get blocked out of many of the best alternatives. The fintech world treats Canadians as second class citizens almost as often as Canadian banks do.

The margin for error is smaller. The cost of improvisation is higher. That means Canadians need to plan earlier and more deliberately. Waiting until something breaks is riskier. Relying on a single account or platform is more dangerous. Assuming access will improve with time abroad is usually wrong.

For Canadians, a Plan B is not optional. It is basic risk management.

It means designing financial access around constraints rather than hoping they ease. It means building redundancy before it is needed. It means accepting that some doors are closed and planning around the ones that remain open.

At PlanB Expat, the focus is not on shortcuts or gray areas. It is on building compliant setups that survive scrutiny and friction. For Canadians, that mindset is the difference between a manageable expat life and a constant low level crisis.

If reading this makes you uncomfortable, it usually means you are closer to the edge than you thought.

Canadians can live well abroad, but they cannot do it casually. The system does not allow it. Planning is not a luxury. It is the price of staying functional.

The good news: Canadians who build the right stack from the start operate just as smoothly as Americans. It takes more planning, but the tools exist. Wise as your foundation, AirTM or UglyCash for card backup, a local bank account for rent, and Kraken or CEX.IO for crypto. That combination covers every gap this article describes.

Build a compliant stack that works for your situation, not a workaround you hope survives scrutiny.