A card that cost $95 a year now costs $195. Chase refreshed its Aeroplan card in September, and the headline number is the fee — up $100, or about $16.25 a month. The trade looks simple on paper: a bigger welcome offer, new Air Canada benefits and a pay-yourself-back feature that survives the refresh. What moved underneath the marketing is a set of multipliers that got worse.
What actually changed
Three things shifted at once. The annual fee doubled, from $95 to $195. The welcome offer rose to 115,000 points, which both Doctor of Credit and Frequent Miler describe as the best this product has carried. And Chase attached Air Canada-linked benefits, including annual credits the refresh pegs at roughly $100 — a useful anchor when you run the arithmetic.
Then there is the part that costs you quietly. Grocery and dining went from 3x to 2x. The Ultimate Rewards transfer bonus that some cardholders were stacking is gone.
The credit question
A credit only counts if you redeem it. The Air Canada benefits are worth their full value to a household that flies the airline at least once a year and would use the specific perks attached to them. If you fly Air Canada once every three years, or if the perks duplicate benefits you already get from another card, the credit is a number on a page rather than money in your pocket. Value it at zero and the fee increase is $100 straight up.
Pay yourself back on travel purchases stays, at least for now. That last phrase is doing real work. It was the retention feature that made the old $95 fee easy to justify, and it is the single most likely piece of this card to change again.
Who should keep it
Keep the card if you already fly Air Canada enough to use the credits and you were paying $95 without complaint. For you the effective increase is closer to $100, the credits offset most of that, and the points are still worth more than the fee when you transfer them into Aeroplan and book partner awards. That transfer path is the usual reason people carry this card in the first place, and it survived the refresh.
Drop it if you carried it mainly for groceries and dining. At 3x, a household spending $1,000 a month across those two categories earned about 36,000 points a year. At 2x, the same spending earns about 24,000. You are losing roughly a third of that earn rate while paying more than double the fee. If that is your profile, a no-fee 2% cash back card or a dining-heavy competitor can beat this math, especially after you subtract $195.
If you carry a balance
None of the above includes interest. A rewards card with a $195 fee and a revolving balance is one of the more expensive ways to borrow money. If you carry month to month, the points you earn are almost certainly worth less than the interest you pay, and the fee increase just widens that gap. The category multipliers are not a reason to keep a card you are financing. Pay it down or move the balance first, then decide.
Check your renewal month, too. Fee and benefit changes on refreshed products generally land when the account renews rather than mid-cycle, so the $195 usually arrives on the anniversary date. Some issuers will refund an annual fee if you cancel within a short window after it posts, but do not count on that. Read your own terms and act before the charge, not after.
What Chase gets
The issuer math is not complicated. Doubling the fee on an existing cardholder base is the cheapest revenue a card issuer can book — no new accounts, no new marketing, no new credit risk. Raising the welcome offer to 115,000 points buys applications, and the higher fee helps pay for them. Cutting grocery and dining from 3x to 2x lowers what the program pays out on the everyday spend cardholders actually generate, while the new credits push spending toward one airline and its travel partners, which is the spend Chase and Air Canada both want more of. Existing holders absorbing the fee without re-shopping is the whole point.
Before your renewal date
Pull your last 12 statements. Add up grocery and dining, and multiply by one point per dollar — that is exactly what the multiplier cut costs you each year. Compare that number against the credits you would realistically use, plus the value of travel redemptions you actually make. If the total is negative and you rarely fly Air Canada, downgrade or cancel before the fee posts. If it is positive and you would have paid $195 anyway, the refresh is fine for you. Just do not let the 115,000-point headline make the call. That offer is aimed at new applicants. Existing holders are being asked to pay $100 more for a card with a thinner everyday earn rate.