Savings
Canara Bank FD interest rates, and the star on the 555-day row
Canara Bank pays 6.60% on a 555-day deposit, but only on a single deposit of ₹5 lakh or more. Below that, its schedule prints no 555-day rate at all.
Canara Bank’s domestic term-deposit schedule, effective 17 March 2026 and still the current one when the page was re-read on 3 September 2026, pays a callable retail peak of 6.60% for 555 days and 6.50% for 444 days to the general public. Both of those rows carry an asterisk, and the asterisk says: “Rates are applicable only for single deposit of Rs.5 Lakh & above.” Every other bucket from one year to ten years pays the general public 6.25%, so below ₹5 lakh Canara’s rate card is effectively one number — and it does not print what a smaller 555-day deposit earns at all.
The number travels and the footnote does not. It reaches search snippets, comparison tables and screenshots forwarded on WhatsApp; the condition stays behind on the bank’s own page. What is left is a headline rate most of the people reading it cannot claim.
The published schedule, asterisks included
Rates below are for resident domestic callable deposits of less than ₹3 crore, read from Canara Bank’s own term-deposit page on 3 September 2026. The schedule itself is stamped with effect from 17 March 2026. The same page carries a second, non-callable column — a flat 10 basis points above the callable rate on every row it prices — but it opens only above ₹1 crore.
| Tenor | General public | Senior citizen |
|---|---|---|
| 7–45 days * | 3.00% | 3.00% |
| 46–90 days | 4.00% | 4.00% |
| 91–179 days | 4.25% | 4.25% |
| 180–269 days | 5.25% | 5.75% |
| 270 days to under 1 year | 5.50% | 6.00% |
| 1 year to 1 year 3 months (except 444 days) | 6.25% | 6.75% |
| 444 days * | 6.50% | 7.00% |
| 555 days * | 6.60% | 7.10% |
| Above 1 year 3 months to under 2 years (except 555 days) | 6.25% | 6.75% |
| 2 years to under 3 years | 6.25% | 6.75% |
| 3 years to under 5 years | 6.25% | 6.75% |
| 5 years to 10 years | 6.25% | 6.75% |
* The bank’s own footnote, covering all three starred rows: “Rates are applicable only for single deposit of Rs.5 Lakh & above. Below Rs.5 Lakh, Minimum tenor of deposit is 15 Days.” On the 7–45 day row that second sentence is the operative one — under ₹5 lakh, the shortest deposit the bank will take is 15 days. On the 444 and 555 day rows, the first sentence is.
Our maintained comparison recorded the same peak and the same ₹5 lakh condition on 27 August 2026, and nothing had moved since. Schedules change without notice and this one has a date on it, so read the rate on the booking screen rather than on any comparison page, including this one.
The star is a minimum-deposit condition, not a formality
The word that does the work is single. The footnote does not say a total relationship of ₹5 lakh, or ₹5 lakh across deposits, or ₹5 lakh in the account. It says one deposit of ₹5 lakh and above.
Two deposits of ₹2.5 lakh booked on the same day for the same 555 days do not qualify. Neither does ₹4,99,000. The condition is a threshold, not a sliding scale.
This matters more than the 10 basis points between the 444-day and 555-day rows, because it decides whether either row is available to you at all.
The confusion is helped along by a second, unrelated minimum on the product pages themselves. A callable Canara 555-day deposit can be opened with ₹1,000, and a callable 444-day deposit with ₹25,000. Those are the minimums to own the product. The ₹5 lakh is the minimum to earn the advertised rate. Two different numbers doing two different jobs, published in two different places, and only one of them appears next to the percentage.
Below ₹5 lakh, 555 days is not priced at all
Canara’s schedule prints no rate for a sub-₹5-lakh deposit booked for 555 days, and the omission is deliberate rather than an oversight. Read the bucket labels in full. The one covering 555 days is “Above 1 Year 3 months to less than 2 Years (Except 555 days)”, and the one covering 444 days is “1 Year & above to 1 year 3 months Only (Except 444 days)”. The bank has cut both special tenors out of the ordinary grid. They do not fall back into it when the ₹5 lakh condition fails; they fall into a hole the schedule leaves open.
So what a ₹2 lakh deposit for exactly 555 days earns is not printed anywhere. What is certain is what it does not earn: the footnote rules out 6.60%. The neighbouring price is knowable — a deposit of, say, 560 days sits squarely inside that bucket, exception and all, at 6.25% general and 6.75% senior. Treat 6.25% as the price of the tenors either side rather than as a promise about 555 days itself.
Against that neighbouring bucket the star is worth 35 basis points at 555 days and 25 at 444. On ₹5 lakh held for the full 555 days, 35 basis points is roughly ₹2,660 of simple interest before compounding and before tax — which is also, roughly, what a depositor gives up by splitting the same ₹5 lakh into two deposits to keep the maturities apart.
Between one year and ten years, Canara pays one rate
Strip out the two starred specials and the schedule flattens completely. One year, two years, three years, five years, ten years: 6.25% for the general public, 6.75% for senior citizens, all the way along.
The ordinary reasoning — lock money for longer, collect a term premium — earns nothing here: a ten-year Canara deposit pays exactly what a one-year deposit pays, while surrendering nine years of flexibility and taking the whole reinvestment risk on the wrong side. If the money is not being used to reach the ₹5 lakh single-deposit threshold, there is no rate-based argument for extending the tenor at all.
The same flatness undercuts the usual five-year tax-saving pitch. Canara sells its tax saver as a separate scheme and the term-deposit schedule prints no distinct rate for it, so the nearest published price for a five-year lock-in is the ordinary 6.25% — the one-year rate. Confirm what the tax-saver row actually pays before assuming it pays more. Either way the deduction the product exists for is unavailable under the default tax regime. Our guide to tax on FD interest works through that, and the ordinary rate is the one to test against a laddered alternative in the FD calculator.
Senior rates start at 180 days, and the super-senior uplift is product-locked
The 0.50 percentage point uplift for resident senior citizens is not applied to every row. Canara’s footnote scopes it to deposits other than NRO, NRE and CGA accounts, below ₹3 crore, with a tenor of 180 days and above. That is why the first three rows of the table show identical rates in both columns: a 90-day deposit pays a 65-year-old exactly what it pays everyone else. Whether the uplift is a flat half point at all varies by bank and by tenor, and our page on senior citizen FD rates works through where it is not.
Super seniors are a stranger case. The schedule carries a separate note giving an additional 0.60% over prevailing rates to depositors aged 80 and above — but “under Canara 444 & Canara 555 products only, for both Callable & Non-Callable deposits”. The uplift is attached to the two products that carry the ₹5 lakh star. So an 80-year-old placing ₹2 lakh for 555 days is asking for an uplift on a base the schedule does not print, under a product whose rate they do not qualify for. Whether that pays 0.60% over 6.25%, 0.50% over it, or nothing extra, is not resolved anywhere on the published pages. We could not verify it, and a branch confirmation in writing is worth more here than any table. The ambiguity is a property of how Canara publishes rather than of the age band: some banks print an 80-plus column against every row of the schedule, PNB among them.
Breaking the deposit re-rates it twice over
Every rate above is from the callable schedule, and callable is not the same as free. The rate page carries the calculation under its own PENALTY heading, and both product pages repeat the 1% figure. The schedule applies it to deposits below ₹3 crore accepted or renewed on or after 12 March 2019:
For premature closure/part withdrawal/premature extension of Domestic/NRO term deposits, the Bank imposes a penalty of 1.00%. Such prematurely closed/part withdrawn/prematurely extended deposits will earn interest at 1.00% below the rate as applicable for the relevant amount slab as ruling on the date of deposit and as applicable for the period run OR 1.00% below the rate at which the deposit has been accepted, whichever is lower.
Read it as two steps. The deposit is first re-priced to the rate available on the day you booked it, for the period the money actually stayed, and a percentage point comes off that. The bank then takes the lower of that figure and your contracted rate less a point.
Put numbers on it. Close a 555-day deposit at around eight months and the reference rate is the 180–269 day row, which is 5.25% on the current schedule. One point off gives 4.25%. The alternative branch — 6.60% less one point — gives 5.60%, and the clause takes the lower. So the penalty is not one percentage point off 6.60%. It is one percentage point off 5.25%, and the ₹5 lakh you deposited to clear the star bought you nothing at all. Break it inside the first seven days and the schedule pays no interest whatsoever.
Non-callable Canara deposits start above ₹1 crore and cannot be closed early or partly withdrawn, so they are outside most retail decisions. Where the cash need is temporary, both product pages list an instant loan against the deposit, and comparing that cost against the closure loss is usually the better arithmetic — our page on a loan against FD sets out how to run it.
₹5 lakh is also the deposit-insurance ceiling
The minimum single deposit that buys Canara’s best retail rate is exactly the amount DICGC insures per depositor per bank.
DICGC covers principal and interest together up to ₹5 lakh per depositor per bank in the same right and capacity, and balances at different branches of the same bank are aggregated. A ₹5 lakh deposit is therefore at the ceiling the day it is funded and above it the moment interest accrues — before counting the savings account you almost certainly hold at the same branch to fund it. The full mechanics, including joint holdings and claim timing, are in our guide to DICGC deposit insurance.
None of that is a warning about Canara’s solvency; it is a large public-sector bank. It does mean the star quietly pushes depositors past the insured line, and that anyone stacking a second or third ₹5 lakh special at the same bank is buying 35 basis points with uninsured exposure. Spreading across separately licensed banks costs a little rate and is the answer that pays nobody a commission.
One tax note while the figures are in front of you: a single ₹5 lakh deposit at 6.60% throws off about ₹33,000 of interest a year, which sits under the ₹50,000 bank TDS threshold for most resident depositors — though that threshold is measured across every deposit you hold at the bank rather than per deposit, so a second one can cross it. No TDS is not the same as no tax. The interest is taxable at your slab rate as it accrues, whether or not the bank deducts anything.
What to do with the 555-day row
| Your situation | What the 555-day row is actually worth | The sensible move |
|---|---|---|
| One deposit of ₹5 lakh or more, money genuinely idle for 18 months | 6.60% general, 7.10% senior — the bank’s best published retail rate | Book it, then total everything you already hold at Canara against the ₹5 lakh insurance limit |
| Under ₹5 lakh in a single deposit, or ₹5 lakh spread across two or three | Nothing. The footnote excludes you and the schedule prices no substitute at 555 days | Consolidate into one deposit, or ask for 560 days at the printed 6.25% and compare that against other banks |
| Money that might be needed inside 18 months | A rate you will not receive | Match the tenor to the date you need the cash, or price an instant loan against the deposit instead of breaking it |
| Aged 80 or above with less than ₹5 lakh | Unresolved on the published pages | Get the applicable super-senior rate confirmed in writing before funding |
| Choosing a tenor purely on rate | Identical to the one-year rate outside the two specials | Pick the shortest tenor that matches the goal; length earns nothing here |
Several other public-sector banks run their own 444-day and 555-day specials, and the dated comparison on our FD interest rates page shows each one beside the exact tenor that earns it. Compare those rows the same way: find the condition attached to the number before you compare the number.
Common questions
Does a ₹2 lakh deposit get the 555-day rate of 6.60%?
No. The asterisk on the 444-day and 555-day rows of Canara Bank's schedule reads: “Rates are applicable only for single deposit of Rs.5 Lakh & above.” A ₹2 lakh deposit can still be booked for 555 days — the product minimum for a callable 555-day deposit is ₹1,000 — but the schedule prints no rate for it. The bucket that would otherwise cover it is labelled “Above 1 Year 3 months to less than 2 Years (Except 555 days)”, so the tenor is carved out rather than falling back. That neighbouring bucket pays 6.25% general and 6.75% senior on the schedule effective 17 March 2026. Get the rate on the booking screen before funding.
Can I add up several deposits to reach the ₹5 lakh minimum?
The footnote says single deposit. Two deposits of ₹2.5 lakh, or five of ₹1 lakh, are not one deposit of ₹5 lakh, and nothing on the published schedule suggests balances are aggregated for this test. If you want the starred rate you have to place the money as one deposit, which also means you cannot ladder it into separate maturities and keep the rate. Ask the branch to confirm in writing if a relationship manager tells you otherwise.
Is a five-year Canara FD better than a one-year one?
Not on the schedule effective 17 March 2026. Every ordinary bucket from one year to ten years pays 6.25% to the general public and 6.75% to senior citizens — the same rate for one year as for ten. There is no term premium to collect, so a longer deposit buys illiquidity and reinvestment risk and pays nothing extra for either. The only rows that pay more are the 444-day and 555-day specials, and both require a single deposit of ₹5 lakh or more.
What rate applies if I break a Canara FD early?
The bank re-rates the deposit and then charges a penalty. Its published schedule states that a prematurely closed deposit earns interest at 1.00% below the rate applicable for the relevant amount slab ruling on the date of deposit for the period actually run, or 1.00% below the contracted rate, whichever is lower, on deposits accepted or renewed on or after 12 March 2019. Close inside seven days and no interest is payable at all. Break a 555-day deposit at around eight months and the reference is the 180–269 day rate, not the 555-day rate. Non-callable deposits cannot be broken at all.
Is a ₹5 lakh Canara deposit fully covered by deposit insurance?
No. DICGC insures principal and interest together up to ₹5 lakh per depositor per bank, in the same right and capacity, and deposits at different branches of the same bank are aggregated. A ₹5 lakh principal is therefore at the ceiling on day one and above it as soon as interest accrues, before counting any savings balance or other deposit you hold at Canara. The cover is per bank, not per deposit, so the fix is a second bank rather than a second FD.
Sources
Rates and rules on this page were read directly from the following sources on the dates shown. Figures change — if you are about to act on one, confirm it at the source.