The Aeroplan Credit Card earns 3x at grocery stores, 3x on dining, and 3x on Air Canada purchases, for a $95 annual fee and a 75,000-point welcome bonus. It is a co-brand card whose value comes almost entirely from the program behind it rather than from the card itself.
Aeroplan is Air Canada's loyalty program, and it is a Star Alliance program with its own award chart. That combination is what makes this card worth attention from someone who has never flown Air Canada.
What the card earns
Three bonus categories at the same rate, which is unusually simple for a co-brand card.
3x points at grocery stores. A broad everyday category, and the one most cardholders will use most.
3x points on dining, including takeout and eligible delivery. Restaurants and the delivery apps that code as restaurants.
3x points on purchases made directly with Air Canada. Tickets, seat selection and bags bought from the airline itself.
1x point on all other purchases. Everything outside those three categories.
Two of the three categories are ordinary household spending. That is the important part, because it means the card earns a travel currency from a grocery budget rather than requiring loyalty to one airline.
Why the program matters more than the card
Aeroplan points transfer nowhere, but they buy travel across the whole Star Alliance network. That is roughly two dozen airlines, which is a wider set of destinations than any single carrier can offer.
The program prices awards on its own chart rather than mirroring the cash fare, which is the structural feature that creates outsized redemptions. Programs that moved to dynamic pricing lost that, and Aeroplan has retained a published structure.
Aeroplan also permits a stopover on a one-way award for a fixed additional cost, which allows two destinations on a single booking. That is a genuine planning tool rather than a marketing line, and it is the feature experienced members build itineraries around.
The break-even on a $95 fee
The fee is low enough that the math resolves quickly.
At 1.5 cents per point, $95 costs about 6,333 points of value. Earning that from the 3x categories takes roughly $2,100 of grocery and dining spending across a year, which is under $180 a month.
Most households clear that without changing anything. For a card carrying a real airline currency, that is a low bar.
The welcome bonus does the heavy lifting in year one
75,000 points is a substantial opening balance, and it is enough for a meaningful redemption on its own rather than being a top-up.
Treat the first year as the program trial. If you find the award space and the routings work for how you travel, the ongoing earning rate justifies keeping it. If you never find a use, the low fee makes the decision to close it inexpensive.
Who this fits
Someone who wants access to Star Alliance award space without committing to a US carrier's program. That is the clearest case.
Someone whose spending concentrates in groceries and restaurants, which is most households, and who wants those categories earning an airline currency rather than cash back.
Someone who plans trips well ahead. Award space at the lowest levels opens early and goes first, and this program rewards the people looking eleven months out.
Who is served better elsewhere
Someone who wants flexibility should look at a transferable currency instead. Points earned here are Aeroplan points from the moment they post, with no option to move them somewhere else if the program changes.
Someone who books mostly domestic US economy will find the routings less compelling, because the network's strength is international and the domestic options run through partners.
Someone who will not research award space will struggle to reach the values that justify a co-brand card at all. A flat-rate cash-back card asks nothing and returns a predictable amount.
Surcharges deserve a check before you commit
Award pricing is only half the cost. Partner awards across Star Alliance vary considerably in the cash component attached to them, and some carriers pass through substantial surcharges.
The same mileage cost can carry very different out-of-pocket totals depending on which airline operates the flight. Price two or three options before booking rather than accepting the first result.
This is the most common way a strong-looking Aeroplan redemption becomes an ordinary one, and it is entirely avoidable with one extra search.
Points are committed the moment they are earned
This is a co-brand card, so the points are Aeroplan points immediately. There is no intermediate flexible currency and no transfer decision to make later.
That removes a risk and adds one. You never face the irreversible transfer problem that flexible points create, which our guide to why points transfers cannot be undone covers in detail. You also carry full exposure to any repricing the program does, with no ability to move the balance elsewhere.
For a card at this fee level, holding that exposure is a reasonable trade. It would be a harder argument at $500.
How the grocery category compares
Three points per dollar on groceries is competitive, and it is worth putting against the alternatives most households already hold.
The strongest supermarket cards return a higher rate but cap it, typically at a few thousand dollars of annual spending, after which they drop to a base rate. This card applies 3x without the kind of hard annual cap those products use, which changes the answer for a household with a large grocery budget.
The tradeoff is currency. A capped 6 percent card returns cash, which is certain. This returns Aeroplan points, which are worth more than cash if you redeem them well and less if you do not.
For a household spending $900 a month on groceries, the difference between those two outcomes is several hundred dollars a year in either direction. That is worth ten minutes of thought before applying.
What a stopover actually buys you
The stopover allowance is the feature most worth understanding, because it changes what a single award is capable of.
On a one-way award, a stopover lets you break the journey in an intermediate city for an extended period rather than connecting straight through. In practice that turns a flight to one destination into a trip to two, for a fixed additional points cost rather than the price of a second ticket.
Used deliberately, it is the difference between visiting one European city and visiting two on the same award. Members who plan around it get materially more out of the program than members who book point to point.
It requires planning, because the routing has to make sense to the program's engine and the award space has to exist on both segments. This is not a feature you stumble into at booking time.
Booking partner space takes patience
Award space across a large alliance is not uniformly available, and the search tools do not always surface everything.
Some partner availability appears reliably online. Some historically has not, and finding it means checking a partner's own site to confirm space exists before searching again. That workflow is familiar to experienced members and unfamiliar to everyone else.
Budget time for it on a first booking. The second one is considerably faster, because you will know which partners and which routes to check first.
Holding it long term
The renewal question comes down to whether you found the program useful in year one.
If you booked something good, the $95 is trivially justified by the 3x categories alone. If you never found award space that suited you, the honest answer is that a transferable currency would serve you better, and closing before the second fee is a reasonable decision.
The low fee makes this a genuinely low-stakes card to try, which is not true of most cards carrying an airline currency this useful.
Elite status is a separate question
Co-brand cards frequently carry a path to airline status, and that path is worth separating from the earning rate when you evaluate one.
Status earned through spending suits people who fly the airline often enough for the benefits to apply. If you are buying into a program mainly for award redemptions on partner airlines, status on the issuing carrier does far less for you.
Be honest about which of those describes you. A card justified on status you will not use is a card justified on nothing, and the earning categories have to carry the fee on their own.
The case for holding it alongside a flexible card
The strongest position is usually not choosing between a co-brand card and a transferable currency, but holding both.
The flexible card covers general spending and keeps its options open. The co-brand card takes the grocery and dining categories where its 3x is competitive, and builds a balance in a specific program you have decided you want.
That split gives you a committed balance for the redemptions you already know you want, and an uncommitted balance for the ones you have not planned yet. It also means a single program devaluation cannot reach your whole points position.
The short version
The Aeroplan Credit Card is a low-fee route into a Star Alliance program with a published award chart and a genuinely useful stopover allowance. The 3x grocery and dining categories mean ordinary household spending funds it.
It suits planners who book early and want international award access. It suits people who want flexibility less well, because the points are committed from day one. At $95 with a 75,000-point opening bonus, the first year is an inexpensive way to find out which of those you are.
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