Bilt 2.D’Oh. Why you should be cautious of their new cards setup

2x + 4% back – what’s not to love?

Well, potentially – quite a lot.

When the three new Bilt cards were launched a few days ago, the most eye-catching of the three cards was the Palladium card. For starters, it’s the only card of the three that has any kind of proper welcome bonus. It also comes with $500 ($300 + $200) of Bilt Cash at approval, Bilt Gold status through the end of 2027, twice annual hotel credits, 1x points on rent and/or mortgage, and the ability to earn 2x points – transferable to Hyatt and Alaska Airlines (among others) – on nearly all other spend. On top of that, you earn 4% Bilt Cash for every dollar you spend on the card. The two other new Bilt cards also have the ability to earn on rent/mortgage, as well as the 4% Bilt Cash earning rate.

That is, unless you choose a different earning option on their new cards. That’s because just two days after their big relaunch, Bilt revised their revision by making their rewards program even more complicated. You can – for now at least – still earn 4% Bilt Cash and use that to earn rewards on your rent or mortgage. Alternatively, you could choose to not earn 4% Bilt Cash and use your lack of Bilt Cash to still earn additional rewards when paying for your housing through Bilt, but only if you’ve spent enough on your Bilt card, but also having it be that your housing payments are more rewarding on a dollar spent basis the less you spend on them, despite Bilt trying to incentivize you to spend more on their cards, but with that only being the case with the revised version, not the original new version. Clear?

On the face of it, the inclusion of 4% Bilt Cash on top of the standard points earning rates makes Bilt 2.0 cards look like they’re potentially best in class. However, there’s a risk that rather than being best in class, they’re the student who focuses on pulling attention-getting stunts in class and ends up with a (Bilt) 2.0 GPA.

Put another way, 4% Bilt Cash (or the new alternative rewards option) could be like a siren song: something that sounds highly appealing and lures you in, but which results in suboptimal results.

Mathification, not couponification

One of the biggest complaints about how banks have updated their premium cards in recent years is that they’ve couponified them. You get $75 back here twice a year. $50 back there once per quarter. $400 back on meals at restaurants that are nowhere near where you live. It can be mentally exhausting keeping track of all these credits to ensure you’re at least recouping the amount you paid out for the card’s annual fee.

Ironically, one of the biggest complaints about the Bilt 2.0 cards is that they haven’t couponified them for the most part. Instead, they have – for want of a better word – mathified them which is actually much worse for a lot of existing and potential cardholders.

With coupon book card benefits, they’re somewhat easy (albeit tedious) to keep track of. For example, with the American Express Platinum Card® there are trackers on your account for the applicable benefits. At a glance, you can see whether you’ve used your Lululemon credit, your Digital Entertainment Credit, your airline fee credit, etc. Simple.

Bilt’s “solution” on the other hand adds excessive complexity. At the initial relaunch, a large part of the new cards’ value proposition came from the 4% Bilt Cash you earn on everyday spend. Bilt has trailed Bilt Cash as being redeemable for Lyft credits, hotel bookings, in-restaurant dining, and more. However, we currently have very, very few details about all of those redemption options. The only redemption option we have firm details about is the ability to cash it out in order to earn points on your housing payments.

For every $1,000 of rent/mortgage payments run through Bilt you’ll earn 1,000 points, but ONLY if you have sufficient Bilt Cash to cover that (if you pick that card option). That means a $1,000 rent payment requires $30 Bilt Cash, a $3,000 rent payment requires $90 Bilt Cash, etc. At a 4% Bilt Cash earning rate, that means every $1,000 of rent or mortgage requires $750 of spend on a Bilt card in order to earn points on the subsequent housing payment in order to earn the full 1,000 points per $1,000 of rent/mortgage.

That setup lasted a grand total of 2 days before they decided to 2x the complexity of Bilt 2.0 which includes a new 2x card. It seems fitting that this botched rollout has been marked by a series of number 2s.

Their new alternative option eliminates 4% Bilt Cash earnings on your spend, but does award the following:

• 250 points if you spend less than 25%+ of your monthly rent
• 0.5x on housing spend when you use your Bilt card for 25%+ of your monthly rent
• 0.75x on housing spend when you use your Bilt card for 50%+ of your monthly rent
• 1x on housing spend when you use your Bilt card for 75%+ of your monthly rent
• 1.25x on housing spend when you use your Bilt card for 100%+ of your monthly rent

From points to no points (unless you spend)

And therein lies one of the big problems with Bilt 2.0: it’s largely destroyed the value proposition for many of its existing customers.

With Bilt 1.0, you earned 1x points on your rent payments. The only requirement for doing that was that you needed to use your Bilt Mastercard five times that month; a slightly irritating requirement sure, but worth the minimal effort. However, you’ll potentially have to put far more spend on your new Bilt card going forward.

Let’s say you live in a high cost of living area and your rent is $5,000 per month (which isn’t even that high compared to some people’s situations). If your card earns Bilt Cash, you now have to calculate how much of it you need which, in this situation, is $5,000 * 0.03 = $150. You then have to calculate how much spend is required on your card to earn $150, so it’s $150 / 0.04 = $3,750. Now that you know how much you need to spend on a Bilt card to earn sufficient Bilt Cash to earn points on your rent, you’ll need to track that, adding another headache and almost creating its own coupon book-like situation.

The newly announced alternative card option that doesn’t earn Bilt Cash does reduce the math calculations a little. If you want to earn 1x points on your rent spend, you’d need to spend 75% of the rent amount, so $5,000 * 0.75 = $3,750. That’s the same as with Bilt Cash. If you spend 100% or more of your rent payment on your Bilt card, you’ll earn 6,250 points ($5,000 * 1.25) rather than 5,000 at 1x. With this new option though, spending in excess of the same amount of your rent doesn’t offer you any additional rewards beyond those 1.25x earnings on your rent, whereas with the Bilt Cash option you’d at least continue to earn 4% of that.

Bilt Cash/0.5x-1.25x opportunity cost

Bilt card earnings

One of the biggest issues with the earning setups of the new Bilt cards is that they could come at a very real opportunity cost.

To demonstrate this, let’s assume a couple has a $2,500 rent payment each month. Their other regular monthly expenses include $750 on groceries, $500 on eating out, $125 for gas, and $500 for other miscellaneous expenses. Those non-housing expenses total $1,875 which – very conveniently – is the amount of spend they would need to put on a Bilt card in order to earn 1x points on the entire $2,500 of rent, whether that’s via 4% Bilt Cash or the new option.

Here’s how many Bilt points they’d earn for each Bilt card:

• Bilt Blue
  • 1x points on $1,875 everyday spend = 1,875 points
  • 1x points on $2,500 rent = 2,500 points
  • Total = 4,375 points
• Bilt Obsidian (assuming grocery is selected as the 3x category)
  • 1x points on $1,125 everyday spend = 1,125 points
  • 3x points on $750 grocery spend = 2,250 points
  • 1x points on rent = 2,500 points
  • Total = 5,875 points
• Bilt Palladium
  • 2x points on $1,875 everyday spend = 3,750 points
  • 1x points on $2,500 rent = 2,500 points
  • Total = 6,250 points

Alternate card lineup earnings

Let’s now compare that to what they could earn by putting that spend on non-Bilt cards. For groceries they use an American Express® Gold Card, for dining they use a Citi Strata Premier℠ Card (to diversify points earnings, rather than choosing to also earn 4x on the Amex Gold card), a Wyndham Rewards Earner Business card for gas, and a Chase Freedom Unlimited® card for unbonused spend. (Update: the intention below is to show what you could earn if you want to diversify earnings. For a more simplified approach you could, for example, use the Amex Gold card for U.S. supermarkets and dining directly, then buy Visa or Mastercard gift cards from grocery stores to use everywhere else, thereby earning 4x Membership Rewards on all of that).

Here’s what they’d earn:

• 3,000 Amex Membership Rewards ($750 groceries * 4)
• 1,500 Citi ThankYou points ($500 * 3)
• 1,000 Wyndham Rewards points ($125 * 8)
• 750 Chase Ultimate Rewards ($500 * 1.5)

That’s a total of 6,250 points across a variety of programs which is (entirely unintentionally) the same number of points earned on a Bilt Palladium card. Given Bilt’s transfer partners include Hyatt and Alaska Airlines, many would choose to stick with Bilt for the transfer partners and simplicity, rather than using this alternate four card setup.

This is ignoring one key aspect though – the four card example doesn’t include their $2,500 rent spend.

One option would be for them to pay for their rent with an Alaska Airlines credit card. Bilt has a partnership with Alaska Airlines which means you earn 3x Atmos Rewards points for rent (but sadly not mortgage) payments in exchange for a 3% fee. That means they’d earn 7,500 Atmos Rewards points per month on their $2,500 rent spend in exchange for paying a $75 fee, effectively buying the points for one cent per point. If it was an Atmos™ Rewards Summit Visa Infinite® Card that was used, they’d also earn 1,250 Atmos Rewards status points per month which is 15,000 over the course of a year. That’s only 5,000 points short of Silver status, with the ability to earn even higher status than that with more spend on that Alaska card elsewhere, through paid and award flights, via the Alaska Airlines shopping portal, etc.

That puts the couple’s earnings at a total of 13,750 points across five different programs (three of which are transferable currencies) and within touching distance of Alaska Airlines Atmos Rewards status (and, by extension, Oneworld Ruby status) in exchange for a $75 fee each month, versus a maximum of 6,250 Bilt points for a Bilt Palladium cardholder.

Alternatively, $2,500 rent expenditure per month is $7,500 over the course of three months. That’s sufficient to meet the minimum spend requirement on the majority of new credit card welcome offers out there. Many renters are able to pay for their rent outside of Bilt through some kind of online payment portal for a fee. While paying a fee isn’t ideal, it could be a very worthwhile expense if it’s what helps ensure that you can earn a 75,000+ point welcome offer on a new credit card.

Let’s imagine the couple takes it in turns to apply for a new credit card each quarter or so. If they don’t apply for any other cards, that means they’re each applying for only two new cards each year which would keep them within Chase’s 5/24 rule even after two years of following this approach.

In the first year, they could each get a Capital One Venture Rewards or Venture X card first, then each get an Atmos Summit card. At the time of publishing this post, the two Capital One cards each have a welcome offer of 75,000 miles after $4,000 spend in the first three months, while the Atmos Summit card awards 80,000 bonus points and a $25K Companion Award after $4,000 spend in the first 90 days.

If they used their rent expenditure to meet the minimum spend requirements on those cards, they’d have the following by the end of the year. n.b. Seeing as the Capital One cards only have a $4,000 spend requirement, the calculations below are based on each of them paying two months of rent on each of those cards, then putting the other eight months on the Alaska cards for their superior 3x earnings if paying those months via Bilt.

• 36,000 Amex Membership Rewards ($750 groceries * 4 * 12 months)
• 18,000 Citi ThankYou points ($500 * 3 * 12 months)
• 12,000 Wyndham Rewards points ($125 * 8 * 12 months)
• 9,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards ($500 * 1.5 * 12 months)
• 170,000 Capital One miles (($2,500 * 2 * 4 months) + (75,000 * 2 welcome offers))
• 220,000 Alaska Airlines Atmos Rewards (($2,500 * 3 * 8 months) + (80,000 * 2 welcome offers))
• 2x 25K Alaska Airlines Atmos Rewards Companion Awards

Assuming a 3% fee for each month’s rent payment, they’d spend $900 in fees over the course of a year which is $900 more than they’d pay via Bilt.

However, just look at that immense haul of points and miles. If they’d directed all their spend to a Bilt Palladium card instead, they’d have only 75,000 Bilt points through spend, or 125,000 points if they also happened to earn 50,000 points from the welcome offer. That’s peanuts (or should that be bananas? 😉 ) in comparison.

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu

Even if you ignore opportunity cost (which you shouldn’t), there are other reasons to be extremely cautious of Bilt Cash if that’s the card earning option you select. A key concern is the expiration of Bilt Cash as it vanishes into thin air at the end of the year in which it was earned, with the exception of up to $100 which gets rolled over to the next year.

Many people spend far more in the last few months of the year due to the upcoming holidays which means that if they put that spend on a Bilt card, they could be earning substantial sums of Bilt Cash. The general busyness of life at that time of the year means a lot of people will likely forget to redeem it before December 31 – if they’re even aware of the expiration policy in the first place – and belatedly discover that they’ve lost all that Bilt Cash. $100 of Bilt Cash is earned on only $2.500 of spend, so anything earned in excess of that and left unredeemed at the end of the year goes entirely to waste.

For cardholders who are aware of the Bilt Cash expiration policy, it could provide a disincentive for using your Bilt card when you’re probably spending the most money of any point in the year.

It’s an appallingly customer-unfriendly policy that actively punishes Bilt’s most loyal cardholders – those who are putting substantial spend on their cards which is the exact behavior that Bilt is trying to encourage in the first place. If they’d set it up whereby Bilt Cash expires on a rolling 12 month basis from when you earn it, that would’ve been a fairer approach. Not ideal, but it would give cardholders a far more reasonable opportunity to redeem their Bilt Cash before it disappears into the ether.

The overly harsh expiration policy of Bilt Cash is one negative against it. Right now, another negative is that we don’t really know how all the other Bilt Cash redemption options will work.

Bilt Cash concerns

As an alternative to redeeming Bilt Cash to earn points on your housing payments, you’ll be able to redeem it in the following ways. The following descriptions are pulled directly from Bilt’s website as it’s worth seeing exactly how they’re describing each redemption option.

Unlock access

• Elevated status for transfer bonuses: redeem Bilt Cash to boost your status tier and access a higher transfer bonus during Rent Day.
• Home Away From Home collection: redeem Bilt Cash to gain access to Bilt’s luxury hotel collection and exclusive benefits during your stay.
• Exclusive Bilt experiences: redeem Bilt Cash to book exclusive experiences like dining reservations, fitness classes, comedy shows, and more.

Dollar-for-dollar monthly credits

• Hotel bookings: apply Bilt Cash toward hotel bookings made in the Bilt Travel Portal.Lyft credits: redeem for Lyft credits and get where you’re going for less.
• Fitness Classes: use Bilt Cash toward bookings in the Bilt App and save on your favorite workouts.
• Dining: use Bilt Cash to pay your tab when you use Mobile Dining Checkout at select Bilt partner restaurants.
• Home Delivery: save on everyday essentials ordered through Home Delivery, powered by Gopuff.
• The Bilt Collection: redeem Bilt Cash for select items and limited drops from the Bilt Collection.

Some of those sound great in theory, but the lack of any proper details about how they’ll work doesn’t bode well due to the somewhat vague wording. For example, you’ll be able to unlock elevated status to get access to higher transfer bonuses. However, Bilt hasn’t shared how many points will be required, nor do we know how generous future transfer bonuses will be, nor if a Silver member will be able to upgrade to Platinum status, or if they’ll be limited to boosting their status to Gold only.

With hotel bookings, perhaps there’ll be a cap on how much Bilt Cash you’ll be able to redeem each month. One thing Bilt has confirmed is that hotel bookings paid for with (or in part by) Bilt Cash will require a minimum two night stay. That greatly reduces its utility, especially seeing as Bilt Travel hotel bookings (other than Home Away From Home stays) aren’t loyalty eligible. That means you don’t earn points with hotel programs, you aren’t eligible to receive elite status benefits, etc. and there’s no indication when that promised feature will become available.

With Lyft credits, restrictions could be anything. However, Bilt has suggested that this might be capped at $10 per month which borders on meaningless. There’s even the possibility that the $10 (or however much they eventually settle on) won’t be instantly issued which won’t be at all helpful if you’re just about to hail a ride in the Lyft app.

For dining, it refers to ‘select Bilt partner restaurants.’ My thoughts ever since seeing that wording have been that the list will consist of a very limited selection of restaurants solely in large cities where you’re looking at dropping $200 per person, rather than being able to redeem $15 Bilt Cash for a burrito bowl at your local joint. It looks like that’s fairly accurate, but it could be even worse than that. In addition to having a very limited selection of dining establishments, Bilt could also choose to cap how much you can redeem per dine or per month to something very low like $25 or $50 (or even lower seeing as they’re considering a limit of only $10 for Lyft credits).

Hopefully the precise details won’t be as stringent as some of the examples I’ve given above, but that’s one of the problems – we simply don’t know.

What’s even more bonkers about all of this is that even Bilt doesn’t seem to know how you’ll be able to use Bilt Cash.

Details? What details?

The fact that Bilt hasn’t provided firm details about how Bilt Cash will actually work (other than for rent/mortgage fee redemptions) means that they either don’t have the details ironed out, or they’re choosing to withhold the details.

If it’s the former, that’s amateur hour stuff considering they’d already listed all the ways you’ll supposedly be able to redeem Bilt Cash months ago, not to mention the fact that they’ve just launched their three new cards where a key value proposition is the 4% Bilt Cash you can choose to earn.

If it’s the latter – that they’re deliberately withholding details – that suggests the redemption options will have limits placed on them that are so severe that they’ll nuke Bilt Cash’s overall value. If details were already ironed out and Bilt knew that they’d truly be giving cardholders incredible value, they would’ve been shouting from the rooftops about how valuable 4% Bilt Cash will be and giving precise details rather than somewhat vague allusions to benefits.

It could well be a combination of the two. For example, the Bilt Cash terms & conditions previously listed the following redemption limits:

• Maximum Bilt Cash redemption per day: $1,000
• Maximum Bilt Cash redemption per week: $5,000
• Maximum Bilt Cash redemption per month: $10,000

On the day that the new cards were launched, that section was deleted entirely from their website. That might mean that Bilt are temporarily hiding those limits and that that’s what they’ll actually be, it could be that they’ve since decided they want to increase or decrease those limits, or it might just be that they’re making it all up as they go along.

How much do you want to invest in a program when there are so many unknowns? For example, in a reply to a question on Reddit about Rent Day, Bilt’s Richard Kerr replied:

Rent Day will still exist, there will still be spend bonuses, there will still be best in class travel promotions – will it look like it does now? Not sure TBH as we haven’t completed March rent day planning yet.

With a similar question regarding whether there’ll continue to be Rent Day spending multipliers, his reply was:

There will be, but it likely won’t look like it does today. This is something we have a lot of ideas for and now with the core launch over, the kind of stuff I get excited about. We can go play mad scientist on the white board and come up with really creative and rewarding promos.

With another question about whether the Palladium card would earn 4x on Rent Day (as a result of doubled points that day like they’ve offered in the past), his reply was:

TBD how we handle this, there will be spend bonuses on rent day

That could mean anything. There’ll be spend bonuses….but they’ll be capped at 500 points. There’ll still be best in class travel promotions…but rather than having up to 100% transfer bonuses, they’ll be up to 50% transfer bonuses. To be fair, 50% transfer bonuses would still be best in class (for Bilt Platinum members at least) compared to other transferable currencies, but it would be a significant downgrade compared to transfer bonuses over the past couple of years. Other restrictions could include reserving transfer bonuses for cardholders only (I hope I didn’t just give them an idea.)

That’s if even 50% transfer bonuses continue to be a thing. Notice the way that answer was phrased (my bolding): “best in class travel promotions.” Not “best in class transfer bonuses” (which is primarily what Bilt cardholders will care about most), but travel promotions. Maybe I’m reading too much into that wording seeing as Bilt does run non-transfer bonus promotions on Rent Day. But maybe not.

However, the fact that Bilt’s most prominent customer facing rep is openly stating that Bilt doesn’t know how their brand new credit cards and their overall rewards program are going to run in a few weeks time is wild. If they don’t know what they’re doing, how can they expect their customers to trust them? It would be one thing if it was just that they hadn’t finished building the tech capability to support a new feature, but simply not knowing how your own major card features will work at a basic level even after you’ve launched them is astonishing.

Chase was rightly panned for its revamp and general rollout of the updated Sapphire Reserve® Card last year. However, imagine that they’d opened the relaunched card for applications and subsequently said to cardholders:

The cards have a new StubHub credit, but we’re not sure yet how much it’ll be for. And our new Sapphire Reserve Exclusive Tables feature? We can’t tell you yet which restaurants you’ll be able to use the credit at. Oh, and the DoorDash DashPass benefit? We haven’t decided yet whether to give that to you for free or if it’ll be available to you at a discounted price.

We’re also going to get rid of primary auto rental collision damage waiver coverage. Oh, wait. I’m being told that I wasn’t supposed to actually highlight that for you – you were supposed to find that out for yourself.

Everyone would be justifiably incredulous, but that’s the equivalent of what Bilt has done with Bilt 2.0.

Non-Bilt Cash card considerations

There are other factors to consider too when deciding whether or not you want to convert your existing Bilt Mastercard into one of the Cardless offerings. For example, the old Bilt Mastercard offered primary auto rental collision damage waiver cover, but that’s disappearing on the new cards. It’s a change that could come back to bite converting cardholders who don’t pay attention to that coverage downgrade and use their Bilt 2.0 card to pay for domestic car rentals. Even the $495 annual fee Palladium card doesn’t have primary cover.

Another surprising and miserly feature is that tax payments won’t earn Bilt points, so you can forget about earning 1x or 2x Bilt Points + 4% Bilt Cash on those. There are many other spending categories that won’t earn points nor Bilt Cash. Some of those are standard exclusions like cash advances, lottery tickets, betting transactions, etc. However, there are some surprising exclusions like “online resale marketplaces (such as eBay or Facebook Marketplace)”. Want to buy a rare piece of vinyl on eBay or a used dresser on Facebook Marketplace? Bilt will happily let you use their card to pay for it, but they’ll refuse to award any points or Bilt Cash for it.

Something else to be aware of is that Bilt’s new banking partner Cardless isn’t known for taking too kindly to people who cycle their credit card limits and Bilt themselves are well known for trying to eliminate gaming by nixing features, blocking certain transactions, shutting down cardholders, etc. Depending on what credit line you’re awarded, you could end up being severely hampered in your ability to earn substantial rewards, even with the 2x everywhere (except taxes, eBay, Facebook Marketplace, etc.) Palladium card.

Another feature that’ll be very important to be aware of going forward is that rent and/or mortgage payments won’t be charged to your Bilt card. Instead, Bilt will pull the payment from your checking account via ACH. On the one hand that could be a good thing as it means your housing payment doesn’t eat up a (potentially) substantial chunk of your credit line. On the other hand, it’s a completely different process for existing cardholders, so there’s a danger that some people will forget about the new process and not have enough in their linked checking account at the time that Bilt tries to take payment to cover their rent/mortgage.

I imagine that there are many existing Bilt cardholders who’ve used the old Bilt Mastercard to float their rent each month. With very little notice, they’re going to have to pay that past month’s rent, while also ensuring they have enough cash in their checking account to pay the next month’s rent at pretty much the same time. Regardless of the merits of someone having enough cash in an emergency account to cover for unexpected expenses, the reality of the situation is that many people do live paycheck to paycheck (or might have that float sitting in a CD or other high yield savings account) and Bilt cardholders aren’t immune to that.

I’m aware of this situation because I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time trying to keep up to speed on all the changes announced this past week. Your average person though? They’re not getting into the weeds of this and, as far as I’m aware, Bilt hasn’t communicated this major policy change particularly clearly to all existing cardholders yet.

Don’t feed fund the trolls

Although it’s not directly card-related, I have been disappointed with how Bilt has been actively trolling its existing cardholders who’ve gotten their business where it is today, especially considering how badly Bilt has botched their 2.0 relaunch so far.

In a video published as a result of the card leaks ahead of the launch, there was a reference made to having enough bananas. That was a cheeky nod to the fact that some Bilt 1.0 cardholders would fulfill the ‘five transactions to earn points on rent’ by buying five bananas in separate transactions. Fair enough.

At the subsequent card launch, Bilt had on stage a five (Silver? Platinum? Palladium? Unobtainium?) banana decoration. OK, so they’re leaning into the whole five bananas thing.

After that, they added the five banana decoration as a purchase option in the Bilt Collection for $15 or 1,500 Bilt Points. I guess if nothing else, it’ll make a nice trophy for them if they win our Bonvoyed of the Year awards at the end of this year.

The trolling subsequently got taken even further by this (later deleted) post on Instagram:

Just imagine if Amex, Chase, Citi, etc. had one of their corporate executives publicly mocking their client base for the temerity of trying to get value out of their credit card rewards program by playing by the rules that the bank themselves had set. It would be mind-blowing due to how highly inappropriate it would be and I’m evidently not the only one who had this reaction.

If this is the level of disdain Bilt has for its 1.0 customers, who’s to say they’re not going to disdain you as a Bilt 2.0 cardholder when you don’t make them enough money in the future? It also means that if you try to maximize your earnings from Bilt 2.0 based on the rules that Bilt themselves have set, Bilt might choose to do something like shut down your credit card. So that they can, y’know, martyr themselves in order to protect “normal people” from basement dwelling cheaters like you.

Ultimately, I don’t actually care whether or not Bilt – or any bank – disdains me, but it leaves a bad taste in the mouth nonetheless.

Maybe it’s all the bananas.

Final Thoughts

Since their launch five years ago, Bilt has been genuinely innovative and has been a welcome addition to the points and miles world. Enabling people to earn rewards on rent, offering transfer bonus rates that were previously unheard of, adding Alaska Airlines and Hyatt as transfer partners and thereby creating a rewards program that could legitimately claim to be the most valuable transferable currency has been an impressive achievement.

Their key selling point for many people was the ability to earn transferable points when paying their rent. The only hoop you had to jump through was that you had to use your Bilt card for five transactions each month.

That setup has completely changed with Bilt 2.0. You’ll now earn very few Bilt points on your rent spend unless you also use your Bilt card for a significant chunk of your spending. With the Bilt Cash option, you’ll earn 1,000 Bilt points for every $30 of Bilt Cash you earn (which requires $750 of spend on a Bilt card). For the new option, you’ll earn a minimum of 250 points when paying your rent through Bilt, with the number of points earned increasing the more you spend on your card.

As a result, I now don’t particularly trust Bilt to not upend their program again in a year or two because they’ve already displayed a willingness to destroy their long-standing value proposition for a significant chunk of their existing customers. Not to mention the fact that they changed things again only two days after their recent relaunch in order to add even more complexity to the new program.

That’s not to say that you can’t get good value from some of the new Bilt cards – you absolutely can as Greg has demonstrated. Earning 2x points on the Palladium card could be very rewarding if you have a high credit limit and significant amounts of otherwise unbonused spend, especially with the ability to transfer those points to Hyatt, Alaska, etc.

Someone who only wants one credit card and wants to earn points on their rent or mortgage spend could get decent enough value from the Bilt Blue card. The ability to earn 3x points at grocery stores on up to $25K spend per year that can be transferred to Hyatt and Alaska Airlines will be a very nice option for some, especially those who aren’t able to get more Chase Ultimate Rewards-earning cards right now (which are the only cards that can transfer to Hyatt.)

If you earn substantial rewards through the Rakuten shopping portal, earning at least Silver status via Bilt card spend could be a sensible option in order to retain the ability to transfer Rakuten earnings to Bilt on a 1:1 basis after May (that’s when the transfer ratio will drop to 1:0.5 for those without Bilt status).

However, I would be extremely cautious about how high of a valuation you place on Bilt Cash for non-rent/mortgage redemptions given the absence of details about how those other redemptions will work. It’s also worth being prepared for further negative changes to features like Rent Day compared to the past couple of years when deciding how much time, energy, spend, and mathing you want to invest in the Bilt ecosystem in the coming year(s).

Be sure to also seriously consider the opportunity cost of diverting more of your spend to Bilt cards in order to earn points on your housing payments. It could result in you earning far fewer rewards overall compared to your alternative options as demonstrated earlier in the post.

The “move fast and break things” mantra is one thing when you’re a tech company trying to create some random app. It’s a whole other thing when you’re talking about important financial products and expenses like credit cards, mortgages, and rent. It’s a shame that – from my perspective – their many missteps mean Bilt 2.0 is fast turning into Bilt 2.D’oh.

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