Rifco National Auto Finance
Non-prime auto lender, Red Deer, Alberta. Lends through dealerships in every province except Quebec.
I have been writing about Canadian consumer credit for a little over twenty years, and Rifco is one of the few lenders I have had to rewrite my notes on twice. In June 2024 they stopped taking new applications altogether. Today their website is back to advertising rates from 12.9% and actively recruiting dealers. If you have landed here because a dealership just told you your financing is going through Rifco, the short answer is that they appear to be lending again, and there is one number in their fee schedule you need to see before you sign.
Do not take the first approval you are handed
Rifco only lends through dealerships, so the rate you are quoted is the one that dealer chose to submit. Running your file through a comparison broker first takes a few minutes and gives you a second number to hold it against. Both of these are free and neither affects your credit score to get a quote.
These two links are affiliate links. If you apply through them we may earn a commission, at no cost to you. It does not change what either company offers you, and Rifco is not a partner of ours.
Rifco at a glance
| Interest rates | From 12.9% advertised. Third party sources put the working range at roughly 9.9% to 31%. |
| Loan amounts | Roughly $10,000 to $55,000 |
| Terms | 24 to 84 months |
| Application fee | $749, added to every funded loan |
| Where they lend | All provinces except Quebec |
| Minimum credit score | 300 |
| Minimum income | $2,000 to $2,500 per month depending on the product |
| How you apply | Through a dealership. There is no direct consumer application. |
| In business since | 2001, head office in Red Deer, Alberta |
Are they actually lending again?
This is the part most pages about Rifco get wrong, usually because they were written once and never touched again.
On 17 June 2024, Rifco told its dealer network it would not be accepting new financing applications, with no end date attached. The company pointed at used vehicle prices, the cost of living and high interest rates, and said affordability had reached near record lows. Layoffs followed, including people on the team whose job was recruiting and supporting dealers. For a lender that only reaches customers through dealerships, cutting that team was not a small signal.
As I write this in August 2026, the picture is different. Rifco’s website is live and selling. The homepage leads with “Your Key to Auto Financing”, advertises rates as low as 12.9%, describes full spectrum non-prime lending, and carries a “Become A Dealer” call to action. Third party lender directories updated for 2026 list them as active.
What I could not find anywhere is an announcement that the pause ended. No press release, no dealer bulletin, nothing. So here is how I would treat it, and it is how I would treat any lender in this position: the 2024 pause is a documented fact, the current marketing is a documented fact, and the gap between them is not something I am going to paper over with a confident guess. If a dealer tells you your deal is going to Rifco, ask them to confirm the approval is live before you put a deposit down. That is a thirty second question that protects you.
Splash Auto Finance is Rifco, and it no longer exists separately
Splash Auto Finance launched in 2018 as Rifco’s own direct to consumer brand. It was never a separate company and nobody acquired it. I checked the domain while writing this: splashautofinance.ca now returns a 302 redirect straight to rifco.net.
If you find a page recommending Splash as an alternative to Rifco, that page is out of date. They were always the same balance sheet.
The $749 fee is the number that matters
Rifco charges a $749 application fee and it is added to every funded loan. It is not optional and it is not refunded if the deal goes sideways later. It gets financed along with the car, which means you pay interest on it for the life of the loan.
People underestimate what that does. Here is the same $20,000 loan at 19.9% over 72 months, with and without the fee rolled in.
| Without the fee | With the $749 fee | |
|---|---|---|
| Amount financed | $20,000 | $20,749 |
| Monthly payment | $478 | $496 |
| Total interest | $14,409 | $14,948 |
| Extra cost of the fee | $1,289 |
A $749 fee costs you about $1,289 once you finance it over six years. You can run your own numbers on our Canadian car loan calculator, which handles provincial sales tax and trade-in credit as well.
Fees like this are normal in non-prime lending. What is not normal is how rarely they get mentioned before the paperwork comes out. Ask what the fee is, in dollars, before you agree to anything. If a dealer will not tell you, that is your answer about the dealer.
What the ratings actually say
Better Business Bureau
A+
Accredited since 4 August 2023
BBB complaints
33
Closed in three years, 7 in the last twelve months
An A+ next to 33 complaints looks contradictory until you understand what the BBB grade measures. It rewards responding to complaints, not resolving them in the customer’s favour. Of Rifco’s file, three complaints are marked resolved and thirty are marked answered. Rifco replies. That is worth something, and it is not the same as the customer getting what they wanted.
Reading through the complaints, four themes come up again and again:
- Charges nobody explained up front. Bailiff fees, interest that kept accruing after a customer thought the account was settled, fees appearing after payout.
- GPS and tracking devices on the vehicle. Several complaints involve devices malfunctioning. If a device is being installed on your car, get it in writing, along with what happens if it fails.
- Lien disputes after repairs. Customers caught between a repair shop and the lender over who has claim to the vehicle.
- Communication going quiet. Slow or no responses at exactly the moment the customer needed an answer.
None of that makes Rifco unusual for the subprime end of the market. I have read the same four themes on nearly every non-prime auto file I have looked at over the years. It does tell you what to document. Keep every statement, get fee quotes in writing, and photograph any device installed on your vehicle at delivery.
Pros and cons
👍What works
- Genuinely low credit floor. A 300 score is about as low as any lender in Canada will look at.
- Terms to 84 months, which keeps the payment manageable on a larger balance.
- Over twenty years in business and BBB accredited, which is rare in this corner of the market.
- Answers its complaints rather than ignoring them.
- Coverage in every province except Quebec, including smaller markets where lender choice is thin.
👎What does not
- The $749 application fee, financed, which really costs over $1,200.
- Rates reaching into the high twenties and beyond for weaker files.
- You cannot apply directly. The dealer controls what you are shown.
- No public confirmation that the June 2024 lending pause formally ended.
- Repeated complaints about undisclosed charges and vehicle tracking devices.
Who Rifco suits, and who should walk
Rifco makes sense if your credit is genuinely damaged, you have steady income above their floor, and a dealership has already put a specific car in front of you. That is the situation this lender was built for, and there are not many alternatives once your score drops into the 400s and 500s.
Walk if any of these apply. Your credit is only mildly bruised, in which case a bank or credit union will beat this comfortably. You are in Quebec, where Rifco does not lend at all. Or the dealer will not tell you the rate and the fee in writing before you commit.
One story that has stayed with me. Years ago a reader emailed me about a subprime approval he was thrilled with, because the payment fit his budget almost to the dollar. He had not noticed the term was 84 months on a car with 140,000 kilometres already on it. He was going to be paying for that vehicle for two years after it stopped being worth repairing. The payment was never the problem. The length was. Whenever you see a long term offered as the solution to an affordability problem, that is the moment to slow down.
Before you accept a Rifco approval
- Get a competing quote. A dealer submits your file where it suits them. A broker submits it to a panel. Compare the two before deciding.
- Ask for the fee in dollars. Not “there are some fees”. The number.
- Ask whether a GPS or starter interrupt device is being installed. Get the answer in writing.
- Check the term against the car. If the loan outlives the vehicle, shorten it or buy cheaper.
- Confirm the approval is live. Given the 2024 pause, this is worth thirty seconds.
Get a second number before you sign
A dealership shows you the approval it wants you to take. Two free quotes take a few minutes and cost you nothing but the time.
How Rifco compares to the rest of the market
Rifco sits in the middle of the non-prime pack. Cheaper than the worst of it, considerably more expensive than a credit union, and roughly level with the other dealer-network lenders. For the full field see our guide to car loans for bad credit in Canada, which covers fifteen lenders side by side.
Two comparisons worth making directly. Northlake Financial plays in the same space and now services the book of Axis Auto Finance, another lender that stopped writing new business. That is two of the names in this segment that have pulled back in three years, which tells you something about the economics of lending to damaged credit right now.
If your score is the thing standing between you and a normal rate, the highest return on your time is not shopping lenders at all. It is spending three to six months on the score itself. Our guide on improving your Canadian credit score covers the moves that actually shift the number, and if you are carrying an R7 rating it is worth understanding what that specifically does to an auto application.
Frequently asked questions
Is Rifco still accepting car loan applications in 2026?
What credit score do you need for a Rifco car loan?
Does Rifco charge fees?
Can I apply to Rifco directly?
Does Rifco lend in Quebec?
What happened to Splash Auto Finance?
Is Rifco a legitimate company?
Will Rifco put a GPS tracker on my car?
The verdict
Rifco is a real lender with a long history, a genuine willingness to look at credit nobody else will touch, and a fee structure you need to see clearly before you agree to anything. The A+ rating is earned on responsiveness rather than outcomes, and the complaint file tells you exactly which details to nail down in writing.
The honest summary is this. If a dealer has put a Rifco approval in front of you and your credit genuinely limits your options, it is a workable deal once you have accounted for the $749. What you should not do is treat it as the only number available to you. Getting a second quote costs nothing, and in this part of the market the spread between the first offer and the best offer is often several thousand dollars over the life of the loan.
Sources and further reading: Rifco’s Better Business Bureau profile, the June 2024 report of Rifco’s lending pause, and the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada’s guidance on car loans and leasing.
Mark Turner is a retired financial writer that now enjoys blogging about different financial topics, such as commodities, inflation, debt, retirement, alternative investments and Canadian politics.
