Last week’s free airspace was dominated by Bilt’s launch of its revamped portfolio of credit cards, or what it’s calling Bilt 2.0. We’ve spilled buckets of digital ink describing the new program, and by the end of the week, it had gathered some unintended steam, with the New York Times calling it “The most confusing rewards program we’ve ever seen.”
Part of the confusion around Bilt’s intricate program was the introduction of Bilt Cash, a second rewards currency earned at a 4% clip on all Bilt credit cards. In advance of the launch, Bilt said quite a bit about how rewarding Bilt Cash would be, both for unlocking point-earning on housing payments and for redeeming “dollar-for-dollar” within the Bilt ecosystem. Unfortunately, there were few details about what exactly those uses might be.
Last Friday, Bilt founder Ankur Jain, in response to the furor over Bilt Cash, introduced yet another mechanism for earning points on housing (read more about that here); this week, he announced the first tranche of potential uses for Bilt Cash.
Forget a coupon book. Bilt Cash is a veritable coupon emporium that asks users to choose from and redeem for 19 options, each with different terms and usage limits. Those affected by “coupon fatigue” may not want to read on. And for those who can’t wait to clip the coupons from the Sunday inserts? Strap in, we’re going for a ride.
Earning Bilt Cash
As a reminder, all Bilt cardholders will earn 4% back in Bilt Cash on all non-housing spend with no maximum. In addition, members earn $50 in Bilt Cash for every 25,000 Bilt points accumulated within a calendar year.
An unfortunate feature of Bilt Cash is that most of it will expire on December 31st each calendar year, regardless of when it is earned. Only $100 of Bilt Cash can be rolled over into the next year.
Full list of Bilt Cash Coupons
For the purposes of this post, I’ve separated all of the uses of Bilt Cash into three categories: Uses we like, Meh, and Silly due to restrictions. Except where noted, all options go live on 2/1/26.
Bilt Cash uses we like
- Point accelerator on everyday spend (cardholders only)
- Enables +1X bonus points on all everyday spend
- Cost: $200 Bilt Cash
- Up to 5 activations annually
- Expires after $5,000 spend or calendar year-end
- Unlock higher transfer bonuses
- Use Bilt Cash to unlock monthly transfer bonuses
- Price and availability yet to be determined
- Unlock rewards on housing payments (cardholders only)
- Every $30 in Bilt Cash redeemed unlocks 1,000 points on monthly rent or mortgage payments made through the Bilt payment portal at a rate of 1 point per $1 of housing payment
- Once you run out of Bilt Cash, you can’t earn more points on your payment. For example, if your payment is $2,000, but you only have $30 in Bilt Cash, you can only earn a maximum of 1,000 Bilt Points. In order to earn the full 2,000 points, you need to have $60 in available Bilt cash
- THIS CAN ONLY BE USED WHILE EARNING IS SET TO BILT CASH
- Up to $700/year of Blade Helicopter bookings (starts 3/1/26)
- Up to $350 per booking
- Up to 2 bookings per year
Meh
- $10/month towards Grubhub grocery or restaurant delivery (starts 3/1/26)
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
- $25/month towards “select” Bilt Dining partners
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
- Restaurant must participate in Bilt Mobile Dining Checkout (currently, almost no restaurants do)
- $50/month towards Bilt Dining Experiences (starts 3/1/26)
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
- $50/month towards Bilt Comedy Experiences (starts 3/1/26)
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
- $80/year credit towards GoPuff Fam membership (starts 3/1/26)
- Applicable to annual or monthly membership
- $10/month toward Lyft rides (Starts 3/1/26)
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
- Unlock Bilt Home Away from Home Benefits
- Blue & Silver members can unlock luxury hotel booking benefits usually reserved only for Gold and Platinum members
- Cost: $95
- $40/month towards group fitness class through Bilt App
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
- $10/month toward Walgreens purchases
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
Silly due to restrictions
- $5 credit towards Bilt Home Delivery powered by GoPuff (starts 3/1/26)
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
- Up to $1200 in hotel credits per year through Bilt Travel
- Two-night minimum stay required
- up to $50/month for Blue/Silver members or up to $100/month for Gold/Platinum members
- Up to $150/year towards Blacklane rides
- Up to $50/year for Blue & Silver members, $100/year for Gold, or $150/year for Platinum
- Up to $
6470/month of Priority Pass extra guest credits (Palladium only)- cover up to two guest fees per month; $
3235 per guest; up to $6470 statement credit per month
- cover up to two guest fees per month; $
- $5/month toward Bilt Neighbourhood Parking (Starts 3/1/26)
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
- $10/month toward Bilt Design Collection purchases
- One use per month; expires at the end of the calendar month chosen
Quick Thoughts
First off, let me just say that I appreciate one thing about the Bilt folks: I think that they truly want to provide as much choice as possible for their customers. I think there is a disconnect in the execution, however. A common complaint about credit cards is that the rewards are too complex, and that there are too many monthly/quarterly/yearly coupons to remember and try to maximize.
Bilt’s answer has been to give us credit cards that generate two different, non-overlapping currencies, two ways to earn rewards on rent that can be changed monthly (neither of which is intuitive), and a choice of 19 coupons to redeem your Bilt Cash (if you choose to earn it). Oh, and each of those coupons has to be manually redeemed, has individual limits and terms, and most of them expire at the end of each calendar month, regardless of when you earn them. Woofda.
Most of these won’t move the needle for many folks, but a few made me laugh.
You can apply up to $32 twice per month toward Priority Pass guest visits if you’re a Palladium cardholder… even though guests cost $35 each (I assume that $32 amount is an error somewhere – update: Bilt has now changed the value to $35).
You can redeem up to $1200 per year for hotels through the Bilt portal, but the monthly maximums are $50 or $100, depending on elite status, and there’s a 2-night minimum. For a $50 credit.
The parking and GoPuff credits are limited to a paltry $5 per month, while Lyft, Walgreens, and Grubhub are limited to $10/month…and don’t forget to redeem Bilt Cash for the credits before you place your orders, rides, etc…otherwise no soup for you.
I actually dig on Blacklane rides, and enjoy using the credits I get from the Citi Strata Elite card. But do we need to chop a potential $150 credit into three tiers of yearly maximum limits based on elite status?
There are a few interesting options as well. Being able to redeem up to $350 per ride toward Blade rides could be significant for the rotary-inclined; buying into transfer bonuses could be appealing, but we still don’t know what the Bilt Cash price will be for that option.
The two choices that seem to stand head and shoulders above the rest are redeeming Bilt Cash for rent and buying up to $25,000 worth of 1x points accelerators per year, at $200 per $5,000 points. We’ve already discussed using Bilt Cash to unlock rewards on housing, but the points accelerators are the most intriguing to me.
I’ll dig more into those in a separate post, but it’s possible turn the Palladium card into a 4x – 4.5x everywhere earner by combining both housing rewards options in alternating months, using Bilt cash for yearly points accelerators, being very disciplined about how much you spend every month, and tracking everything closely. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?
Again, I do want to give everyone at Bilt some credit for their desire to offer as much personalization as they can. But I have to think that, at some point, we’ll see things pared down and simplified. Choice is great, but most folks don’t want board-game-level complexity to be a part of their regular credit card use.
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If I have both a mortgage payment AND a rent payment (son’s college apartment rental), will I be able to turn those into points assuming I have enough Bilt cash? I’m thrown off by the terms/condition language of “mortgage OR rent”
It seems to me that using $100 of monthly Bilt Cash with the $200 semi-annual hotel credit for Palladium gets you $300 in hotels for two nights every six months.
Average hotel cost in the USA is about $170 a night or so, so it seems to me it won’t be impossible to turn it into a couple of free or greatly reduced hotel rooms, and quote possibly even better in the right markets ($150 a night will go pretty far in a lot of Germany or Bangkok, for instance).
Given that this would be ANY hotel in the Bilt Portal (not just limited to AMEX THC for instance, if we’re talking the $300 semi-annual credit for AMEX Platinum) it doesn’t seem like a terrible use case, especially since you can’t roll over Bilt Cash year to year?
Note that Palladium will make you Gold once you hit the SUB.
Yes, but at $300 for any hotel with a two-night minimum, that matches the coupon on the Citi Strata Elite, which I might not personally be able to use (hopefully others can). I simply don’t often pay cash for hotels and when I do, it’s almost always just one night at an airport hotel or the like. At a particularly cheap airport hotel, maybe I can just book 2 nights for around $300 but the math never seems to work for me personally.
Take away two-night minimum and it would be super useful. That’s the same reason why I (and probably others) value FHR credits much more highly than The Edit Credits.
“I simply don’t often pay cash for hotels”
The infinite Ink churn gravy train is dead, which probably makes this harder for a lot of folks (also Hyatt doesn’t exist everywhere).
If you have a mechanism for creating infinity Marriott/Hilton/IHG points God bless you…
I tend to use the VX credit for hotels not airfare (ugh, portals) or cars (corporate rate).
My use case is “I often have to use local hotels instead of consigning myself to the Marriott/Hilton/IHG/Hyatt options”.
“That’s the same reason why I (and probably others) value FHR credits much more highly than The Edit Credits.”
IDK, having to jump through hoops to find a $300ish luxury hotel (and you get ONE night’s stay, which makes it hard to really “maximize” the luxury benefits) is actually a less useful case for me than two night stays where I have a lot of flexibility. I do use it though (though often MORE often as the THC two night requirement credit).
Yes for sure. The hotel credit is pretty useless on the Blue and likely on the Obsidian, but imo potentially very nice on the Palladium. Obsidian could be useful but harder
i get why they called it silly though – it’s just another layer of complexity depending which card you have
after reading all these Bilt articles, I had to open up my quantum physics book to relax! All right, I’d love a net net assessment, please. In the past couple weeks, Greg had said the $500 a month Bilt card is worth grabbing for the 50 K points bonus and it’s benefits. Leaving the rent and mortgage payment dimension aside, does that assessment still stand? Thank you
You can think of the two rewards options as a superposition of states that only collapses when you observe it. And no two bananas can occupied the same state, assuming they are bananas with half-integer spins. The analogy kind of breaks down after that, but I found it helpful.
If I spend 200 BILT cash to activate the accelerator, can I use it 5x/year for 5k accelerated points, for a total of 25k accelerated points? If so, why is it not just 200 BILT cash to accelerate 25k pts all at once?
Because it’s B$200 per $5k spend/5k points. So B$1000 for $25k spend/25k points. Think of it as five separate accelerators.
thx, then it’s not as good as using BILT cash for mortgage
Correct, you should max out mortgage first before using the accelerators.
thx, BILT chat just said the same thing
They should add a way to carry over Bilt Cash. They could call it Bilt Cache. You can’t cash Bilt Cache cash for cash, but if you have built a stash of Bilt Cache you can offset billed Bilt Cash credits with cached Bilt Cash billed to your Bilt Cache stash. I would find this a lot simpler.
This is great, definitely a Dr Seuss book here…
Don’t be rash or brash with your Bilt Cash cache stash, but to rehash before I have to dash (and not to bash, but…), I think I could grow a mustache before I understand Bilt Cash.
It’s all great until there is a Bilt Cache cash stash crash.
Then it all goes into your Bilt Cache Cash Trash
May I suggest an article for those who DO NOT pay rent? I think the best is to get Palladium, use the Bilt Cash for extra 1x and call it a day?
Thats how I plan.
Bilt Cash is really complex to explain to a regular person re: these redemption options (I find the rent/mortgage stuff to be overblown). It is unclear to me that it will be complex to use. Part of my hangup with Amex is the sunken cost feeling. You pay $895 or $325 (which is actually the worse card) and you have to change your behavior to get your money back in credits from Amex (I’ve heard someone describe this as “you work for Amex now”). This seems different to me. As long as you can accept that the cards belong in your wallet as competitive spending cards on their own, and that the simple credits (hotel and Bilt Cash) come close to justifying the annual fee, you will generate some more Bilt Cash as you spend. But it is only value add, not a sunken cost (you are already getting a competitive points return on your spending). The $10 Lyft credit only exists if you have the Bilt Cash to allocate to it. No obligation to use it. But you can take $10 off a ride to the airport. You can take a helicopter ride at a discount if you want to (or you can give it to someone who would really love it), but you don’t have to feel like you will use Blade to get your money back. Nobody has to buy Oura rings and resell them on eBay for 50% of face to say “that coupon is worth $60 toward my annual fee.”
We don’t, however, know how much of a hassle redemption will be. Clunky redemptions will be avoided. I feel like the way they have Lyft integration with Bilt points, that one won’t be a problem. Same with the hotel credits, which are stackable twice a year with the credits on the card (making it possible to get $300 off a 2 night booking). But some of these could be much harder.
I can see someone struggling with 2 things: trying to figure out “what is the optimum use of my Bilt Cash?” and “How can I get rid of all this Bilt Cash. The first one can create decision paralysis because someone is fixated on max value redemptions. That’s only fixable by letting go. The latter issue is a problem that Bilt has to solve. If you run out of good ways to use Bilt Cash and you aren’t happy enough with just continuing to spend on your cards, you will stop. It is up to them to create enough incentive to keep spending. We will see. I’m on the sidelines for a month or two. It is at least interesting to watch to see if people like the process of using Bilt Cash.
I think a big difference with Amex is that Amex would never have just a 50k SUB on a new $495 AF. So you might have more coupon hoops with Amex, but the first year value is at least solid without the coupons. Same with Chase and Citi.
Bilt Cash is really complex to explain to even an irregular person.
I do think it is possible that it might end up being easier to use than all the Amex credits and almost certainly easier to use than the CSR credits. If so, it might be that once you spend the (considerable) effort to understand the nuances and find your best use case that from there it is relatively simple to maintain. For example, something like Nick’s Obsidian grocery card might not be too bad to use.
However, given the current chaos I’m going to wait for the dust to settle a bit before committing.
“Palladium card into a 4.5x – 5x everywhere earner by combining both housing rewards options in alternating months”
Is this: Choose housing only and spend at least the housing amount (x) on other spend in the month. Result 1.25x;
For the other spend: use the Palladium (2x) and an accelerator (1x);
Result for the month is the sum of these reward amounts: 4.25x;
Actually, the housing-only option appears to not be combinable with the accelerator so set the earning option to 4x Bilt Cash back. This allows 1x on housing so the total earn is 4%.
Thanks for this – was missing that as well until your comment. Can’t use the points accelerator while on the housing option.
So the housing option the max is simply 3.25x. 2x + 1.25x and that’s if your monthly spend is exactly the amount of your housing spend.
The B$ option is 3.33x through 75% of housing spend and then 3x on the next $25k (when using the points accelerator and $1k of B$ to activate the accelerator).
But you can use other B$ (the $300 SUB, the $200 annual, the $50 per $25k spend) to effectively reduce the 75% of housing spend needed to earn the B$ to buy the 1x points on housing spend; and then that increases the 3.33x by some amount depending on your total amount of spend (higher cpp increase the lower the spend is).
This is why I had concluded Tim’s claim was wrong — you cannot earn Bilt cash and do the 1.25 option. That can be your final option for the year if you’ve banked too much B$ to rollover but it’s not a way to stack. You could alternate spend and do like 2x rent one month and 1x in the month with the accelerator (so you have enough to load the accelerator the third month) but I still think you run into the spend $5k to earn $200 to spend $5k problem of never reaching escape velocity on your 3x spend.
I’ll be thrilled to be proven wrong by Tim though. 36 more hours!
one small edit: you definitely can use the accelerator while using the 1.25x credit; I see no exclusion about when you activate it. You just won’t earn extra Bilt cash to earn the next accelerator or pay for rent the next month. So you’ll have 4.25 that one month but have to amortize with 2x spend the next month to build up a balance again.
I can no longer use Bilt for rent, so I haven’t even decided what to do with the card. Honestly who has the energy to keep track of this much? These are like AmEx coupons you have to *earn* throughout the year. It’s somehow even more energy than just keeping track of using coupons you got but don’t want. Blasphemous as it may be, I may just let my Bilt card turn into whatever the Wells Fargo card is, just so I don’t have to do the math.
Just basics..what happens to all that bilt cash accumulated in November and December.
At least in vegas we know its stacked towards the house.
This is more “political” double speak etc…
People are saying… BILT needs Greenland…
I’ll do you one better – what happens to Bilt Cash that you earn from spend during the last week of December. Because it’s apparently not earned based on monthly statement dates, it’s per transaction and posted 2-5 business days after the transaction per the T&Cs. So theoretically you could make a transaction then and have no idea whether it will count towards December (subject to the $100 roll over cap) or January. And no clarity if it’s transaction date or posting date that matters.
La dee da…
Yeppers. Nothing is being explained succinctly as my guess is the ink is wet daily as they are using us as market research..
Not sure how any of the 4 companies involved signed off with all the disparity
one small correction/addition: in his email Ankur did give the example for rent day status upgrade that it would be $75 to upgrade from 75% to 100% transfer bonus (subject to change). Could be a solid option depending on the bonus and how much you’re transferring
You guys are killing me with all this analysis with minuscule rent #s. (I pay $4,200 a month in California for a modest family home. ) It seems very clear, so far, that the more you spend on the card, the lower your multiplier becomes, eventually ending up at about 3.2ish on both of the annual fee cards (assuming you max out on Dining or groceries on the $95 card). I’l be curious to see what Tim has to add, and will wait impatiently for Monday…as I still haven’t made a selection for my 2.0 card, despite Bilt texting me daily to do so, haha
If they text you twice a day, would that help? 3x??
Yep, that’s the math – 3.33x up to amount of housing spend, blend with the $25k on points accelerator, get to 3.24x or whatever, and then every $ after lowers the multiplier because you’re blending in regular 2x points.
But… it’s not uncompelling?
Take out complaints of complexity and there are virtually no negative comments about B2.1.
The complexity issue is important for Bilt to address. In fact, they should make it their next developent focus. They should announce, not simplifaction of awards – that would amount to reduction of benefits, but simplification of how to use them. An app. combining location services, knowledge of the full panoply of cards on the user’s phone, past transaction history, etc. to act as an agent that automates card and venfor choices — in real time. Call it EZBilt.
Are you a Bilt employee? Because only a Bilt employee would say they could simplify by adding a third thing.
Andy gets it. Unless L3 is shilling for free, in which case, oof…
Here’s the thing, I have a friend who is slightly into the points and miles game but who really wants a daily driver and lives in LA (so has a LA sized mortgage). She opened 3 cards in 2025 at my urging (CSP when it had the 100,000 point bonus, Alaska Atmos, and Hawaiian). She understands the basics of the points and miles game but she’s not looking to churn cards or open business cards. She would prefer to have one card that earns her points that she can use for the airlines she flies. She’s well educated and intelligent.
She’s the perfect target for Bilt. She values Alaska miles, Southwest miles, and Hyatt points. Bilt is exactly the right points currency for her.
But I cannot get her to understand how great Bilt is for her. It’s simply too complicated. She’s the perfect target for Obsidian with grocery selected, but she can’t understand how points accelerator works. If someone like her can’t get it, then Bilt has failed. They simply won’t be adopted by people outside the hard core enthusiasts and that’s not sustainable.
1) I talked down the Citi Strata Premier in omitting:
3x RESTAURANTS, SUPERMARKETS, Gas, Air Travel, Hotels. Lyft, Uber;
2) If your friend needs lounge access she should compare:
Bilt Palladium. That also boosts her unbonused spend by 1% as well;
Citi Strata Elite: That also boosts her unbonused spend by 0.5%
6x on restaurants as well. Great ‘coupon book’ features as well.
Right. I get that. I totally understand why both Bilt and Citi Strata Premier are good options for her (though less Citi Strata as she hates to fly out of LAX and prefers Burbank strongly so AA is really only useful for booking Alaska as a partner airline for her and she really does like to transfer to Southwest and Hyatt).
But my friend simply can’t understand how Bilt works and what points accelerator means (even though I have tried to explain). She is justifiably nervous about Bilt being involved in any way with paying her mortgage or HOA fees If somebody with a masters degree from Northwestern who is their target audience of high rent, high spend, non churnier can’t understand how their credit card earns points, Bilt is going to struggle to attract anyone outside the points game. Their messaging is terrible and with so many options it is terribly complicated to explain to anyone not already in the weeds.
Just tell her to get the BILT Obsidian, put her dining spend on it, and select Option 1. That’s what I’ve been doing with my friends and family. If she’s nervous about BILT making the ACH transfer, tell her to just pay the rent early the first month to make sure it goes through in time, and thereafter she can just pay rent on the due date.
LOVE the EZBilt idea. Maybe you could add in-app quests that unlock additional credits, like maybe another $5 Lyft credit. Dunno, just spitballing here.
That would be a major part of it and something similar is the subject of my patent.
Excellent. Don’t forget to include plenty of AI features.
I do wonder how the non-points world will see Bilt Cash. Lots of meh coupons for sure, but hey, I’m still easily using the $10 CSR Lyft credit every month, no problem. So, for some folks, a $10 monthly Lyft coupon, $10 at Walgreens, $25 at a restaurant (assuming they get that part of the program to be somewhat widespread…) is $45 that looks somewhat like $45 of real cash on a monthly basis or $540 on an annual basis. Sure I’d discount it by at least 25%, but it’s not crazy for someone to look to maximize that without any regard for points at all.
OMAAT had an article today about top 3 uses of Amex points last year. They were for gift cards, paying with points at checkout, and statement credits. That’s somewhat telling.
I actually think it’s important for the non-points world to want to ascribe a “real” value to Bilt Cash and to these types of coupons. Going to need some folks that take the bad redemption options so that it evens out for us points-folk to pounce on the accelerators and the like.
On those rideshare credits, I’d imagine it depends on where people live and whether they already have their own cars. Living in NYC, yes, sure, we’ll use those up, easily. When I was in FL, they’d go to waste, or I’d use the Uber credits from Amex for Eats instead.
Time to buy one of those trendy New York or Nowhere t-shirts…
Spot on Tim!
Richard Kerr lol. I’m so excited to hear him spin some BS on the Miles to Go podcast about how this is innovative for the average consumer
I hope this coupon cancer doesn’t embolden the other card issuers to add even more complexity. At this rate we’ll need a PHD in credit card coupons to maximize this stuff!
EZBilt will fix that.
L3…livin’ the dream…