Accelerated Bi-Weekly

A payment frequency option where you pay every two weeks at half your monthly payment amount. Because the calendar gives you 26 bi-weekly periods (not 24), you end up paying the equivalent of 13 monthly payments per year instead of 12. That extra payment goes straight to principal.

Easy to confuse with regular bi-weekly, which divides annual cost by 26 and produces no acceleration at all. The labelling matters more than the cadence. If your per-payment amount is your monthly payment divided by two, that's accelerated. If it's your annual cost divided by 26, that's regular.

On a typical Ontario mortgage, accelerated bi-weekly takes 3 to 5 years off the schedule with zero behaviour change. The Accelerated Payment Frequency strategy explainer covers it; the Mortgage Payment Calculator shows the years saved on your numbers.