Bilt’s incredible 100% transfer bonus to Air France Flying Blue on May 1st suddenly has me drooling over Bilt Rewards points. This may be the first transfer bonus I’ve ever seen where I think it’s worth transferring even without a plan for how to use the points. While it’s too late for amassing Bilt points in time for this Flying Blue promo, it now seems like a good idea to earn Bilt points for future promos. How best to get them? Unlike many other points programs, Bilt doesn’t offer a big welcome bonus for getting their credit card. So, we have to look to other options for earning Bilt Rewards. Fortunately, there are quite a few options…
Overview
At its core, Bilt Rewards is a program that offers rewards for paying rent. Fortunately for those of us who do not have rent payments, there are plenty of other ways to earn rewards too. And, best of all, Bilt Rewards points are super-valuable because they offer 1 to 1 transfers to a number of valuable programs including AA, United, Hyatt, and many more. Even without transfer bonuses, I’ve argued that Bilt has a better collection of transfer partners than Amex, Chase, Capital One, or Citi. But where those other programs occasionally offer transfer bonuses ranging from 15% to 50%, Bilt is the only one to offer occasional 100% bonuses. I wasn’t all that excited about the previous IHG and Hawaiian Airlines 100% bonuses, but the Air France deal is incredible. Air France Flying Blue miles often offer very good value for flights between the U.S. and Europe. With a 100% transfer bonus, the potential value is fantastic. While I usually warn against transferring points prospectively, this is a situation where I think that anyone with a bunch of Bilt points should consider it. And that leads me back to the point of this post… how does one go about earning lots of Bilt points?
Unofficial welcome bonus
Even though the Bilt Mastercard doesn’t officially have a welcome bonus, people who sign up for the card report receiving an email from Bilt offering 5x rewards on all charges except for rent for five days (up to 50,000 points max). While that’s not as big of a bonus as you’ll get with many other cards, it can still be significant especially if you have large bills to pay during that timeframe.
Refer friends
Bilt offers a referral program for the Mastercard. For each person you successfully refer, you get 2,500 points. Every 5th successful referral gets you an additional 10,000 points – up to 2 million bonus points. You can find your referral code by tapping the invite button in the app.
One interesting aspect of this offer is that you don’t need to have the card yourself in order to earn points referring others. And while the referral bonus is kind of puny compared to refer-a-friend offers available from Chase or Amex, getting friends to sign up for the fee-free Bilt card should be a very easy sell — especially if they pay rent.
Rewards beyond rent (maybe not)
The headline benefit of the Bilt Mastercard is that it lets you earn rewards for paying rent even if your landlord doesn’t accept credit card payments. Regardless of whether your landlord is paid via check, Venmo, Paypal, or ACH transfer, you can still earn 1 point per dollar for these charges (up to a max of 100,000 points per year). That’s obviously awesome for anyone who pays rent, but what about the rest of us?
UPDATE: The Bilt Rewards Digital Agent chatbot previously listed a number of non-rent payments that could be made with the Bilt rent account, but the chatbot has been updated and now simply states “You can only use our Pay Rent Online feature for rent and rent-related charges. These charges may include rent or additional charges from your landlord, like utilities or maintenance.” Our contact at Bilt confirms that the chatbot’s previous responses were wrong. That said, many people have reported success earning rewards via HOA payments, so there may be a little wiggle room in the definition of “landlord”. Still, most of the options previously listed almost certainly will not work.
As I learned from One Mile at a Time, Bilt’s Digital Agent (chatbot), says that you can pay for other things besides rent in order to earn rewards. Specifically, the Digital Agent told me that I can use the Bilt Rent Account to pay for the following:
HOA feesSecurity depositElectric billGas billWater billCondo feesCollege living/university housing (not paid as part of tuition)CableInternetCell phone paymentApplication fee
Often you can already earn rewards from paying some of the above via any rewards-earning credit card. The above list is most interesting for earning rewards on the things where credit cards aren’t accepted: HOA fees, security deposit, condo fees, and college housing all offer decent opportunities. Additionally, it depends on where you live as to whether utilities can be paid by credit card without a fee so you may find opportunities there.
Earn 3x dining, 3x Lyft, 2x travel
The Bilt Mastercard offers standard category bonuses which make it a good card to use to pay for dining, Lyft rides, and travel.
Double Points on Rent Day
On the first day of each month, the Bilt Mastercard becomes a powerhouse offering double rewards for all spend. That means that you’ll earn 6x dining, 6x Lyft, 4x travel, and 2x everywhere else!
Your earnings potential on Rent Day isn’t infinite: you can earn up to 10,000 maximum bonus points on rent day.
If you can organize your spend to happen on the first of each month, you can do incredibly well with this card. Here are some ideas:
- Pay estimated taxes on the first of the month in order to earn 2x rewards. See: Pay taxes via credit card.
- Visit your favorite restaurant on the first of the month and buy a gift card to that restaurant in order to earn 6x rewards.
- Make the first of each month your “shopping day” in order to earn a minimum of 2x on all shopping spend.
Bilt Dining
Bilt offers automatic 5x rewards for dining at participating restaurants. This is on top of the rewards earned by your credit card. If you use your Bilt credit card to pay at these restaurants, you’ll earn the usual 3x for dining with the card (or 6x on Rent Day) plus 5 extra points per dollar from Bilt Dining. If you pay with a different card linked to your Bilt wallet, you’ll earn whatever rewards your card normally offers (such as 4x Amex points with the Amex Gold card) plus 5x Bilt points.
At the time of this writing, most participating restaurants are in New York City, along with a smattering in other major cities. Bilt intends to expand the list of participating restaurants over time, so it’s worth linking your credit cards to the Bilt Wallet just in case you go to a participating restaurant, even if you don’t live near any of them right now.
Read more here: Bilt Rewards now offers dining program — Earn 5x points when paying with linked card
Small Wins
- Play the Point Quest game: Each Rent Day (the first of each month), play the Point Quest game in the Bilt app to earn up to 250 points.
- Link your Bilt account to transfer partners: Bilt Rewards offers 100 points for every loyalty program you link to your Bilt Rewards account. This represents very low-hanging fruit for most members and does not require having the Bilt Mastercard. Note that Bilt has occasionally run promotions with increased incentives for linking specific programs. For instance, in April 2022, Bilt offered 500 points for linking an American Airlines AAdvantage account and in May 2022 Bilt offered 500 points for linking a World of Hyatt account. Both of those promotions have since expired, but it is worth keeping your eye out for future promotions if you have not yet linked all of your loyalty accounts.
- Link your Bilt account to Amazon: Bilt Rewards points can be used to buy things on Amazon. Don’t do it. It offers terrible value for your points. That said, you can earn 250 Bilt points by simply linking your Bilt account to your Amazon account.
- Link your Bilt account to Lyft: Use any form of payment and earn 2X points on Lyft rideshare rides when your Bilt Rewards and Lyft accounts are linked, and Bilt is set as the active loyalty rewards partner.
- Link credit cards to your Bilt wallet: Earn up to 300 points. Earn 100 points for each card you link to your Bilt Wallet, up to 3 cards.
Conclusion
While it’s not as easy to amass Bilt points as with some other major programs, it is possible to earn a lot of points. The biggest wins come from taking advantage of Bilt’s spend bonuses, friend referrals, and rent (and rent-like) payments. The double-points on Rent Day alone could lead to huge point totals if you try to lump your spend towards the first of each month.
Personally, while my son has the Bilt card, I don’t have one myself… yet. But offers like the 100% transfer bonus to Air France Flying Blue make me think that it may just be time…
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Greg, great article, your podcast almost had me ready to apply to be apart of the madness! Quick question, I currently have the chase reserve, and party justify the annual fee for the travel insurance. It seems like Bilt has created a no annual fee version of chase preferred with the travel protection of the reserve. I feel like I must be missing something, but to get 2x on travel like the preferred plus the protection of the reserve is not bad at all. As a suggestion it would be interesting to compare both products as it relates to their travel protection and see which comes out on top! Thanks for all you do!
Did we say something that made you think that Bilt’s travel protections rival the Sapphire Reserve? Or did you read it somewhere else? I don’t know the Bilt card travel protection details off the top of my head, but I highly doubt that’s the case.
This is interesting, because I actually emailed them specifically about HOA dues payments, and they told me yes, you can, and I have been doing it since (about 3 months now). Let’s see what happens with this current HOA payment (happening today).
How frustrating!
I just received this email confirming (for the 3rd time & from 3 different reps), that Bilt accepts, & rewards (at 1x) HOA payments.
I also haven’t read anywhere in all of Bilt or Wells’ T&Cs specifically prohibiting them + Bilt is paying out monthly like clockwork. I think a safe assumption for those wanting to get the Bilt card for this purpose there is adequate documentation & precedent allowing it:
“Carlos here with Bilt
Rewards Support. Glad to help!
Yes, homeowner association fees are eligible for point rewards. We allow one payment using our Pay Rent Online feature each month. If you have any other questions or concerns, get back to us!
Thank you,
Carlos O.
Bilt Rewards Support”
That’s what they told me too. I’ve been paying my HOA dues, my cell phone bill, and i just added my mortgage (after someone else posted their DP on that). We will see what happens this month I guess
Stupid question, but what exactly qualifies as a “rent” payment? I tried to find this on the Bilt site but couldn’t (I’m sure I just missed it). For example: my son’s friend lives with this parents and helps them out with their mortgage, giving them some cash monthly – would that qualify?
Or even (not that I would do this, but theoretically) could I pay my wife “rent” each month? We own our house. What if it was solely in her name?
I guess what I’m asking is what exactly is a landlord from Bilt’s perspective?
I have no particular knowledge of BIlt’s practices, but I’m going to guess that they send 1099 forms (or an equivalent) to the people they pay rent to. So person-to-person payments that don’t result in reported income almost certainly don’t count. If you’re kiting money around through Bilt with the purpose of earning points from it, you should expect to pay tax on it.
FYI: I’ve updated this post. Bilt has confirmed that the chatbox info about being able to earn rewards for things other than rent was incorrect and they have since fixed the chatbot.
I have in writing from Bilt, twice, they pay rewards on HOA (and I have earned 4 months running now as well). Am waiting on a third response now after your post. I don’t want to be in danger of them shutting down my account
I ran a utility bill through Bilt and got my rewards *shrug*
But, you would have received rewards if you ran your utility bill through any other card.
My utility only takes bank accounts.
I effectively got a 50,000 sign-on bonus with Bilt last November.
Bilt gave me 10x points on the first 5,000 spent in the first five days. This gave me a 50,0000 Bilt points 🙂
Is Bilt still offering this? I did not hear Greg or Nick talk about this.
I’m excited to get the 100% transfer bonus to Air France. Having family now in Nice France these points will be very useful. LA to Tahiti is on the radar as well 🙂
Go Bilt!
Just a heads up: Bilt appears to have changed their chatbot response—I can’t get it to repeat the text reported in OMAAT. It now says “These charges may include rent or additional charges from your landlord, like utilities or maintenance” and does not provide the itemized list. This seems more consistent with the T&Cs. Emailing support resulted in the same answer. Would be interested to hear if anyone has had luck with the ACH working for rent AND a utility provider not billed through a landlord.
Thanks for the heads up. I’ll look into that
I’m pretty sure that you can only nominate one payee for the rent-like payments with Bilt, so it wouldn’t be possible for one person to pay both rent and utilties.
Has anyone else had issues with “lost” checks? When I used the plastiq / bank checks to pay rent, one of my checks got lost and never arrived. I have no way to prove it, but I speculate someone stole it from my landlord’s mailbox. It was a major issue and it could have ended on my credit report. There were also fees with the late rent payment.
Anyway, does bilt offer any kind of guarantee if this were to happen?
This happened to me just last month but it was a USPS issue (they lost/ mis-delivered the check). Point is BILT was pretty good about cancelling the check, returning the charge and still allowing me to keep the points from the transaction(s). Meaning the check was the 5th as well as the point value of the check itself. I was not expecting that at all. I would suggest contacting support via the chat versus replying to the email or text you will get with the check.
We belong to a boat club that does not accept credit cards for annual dues. Is Bill something that can be used for that?
I don’t know. You could try it but don’t be surprised if Bilt rejects it
I’d ask them. I doubt they intend to cover membership fees, but dockage or a mooring might conceivably count. . .
Keep in mind that if your payee can only be paid by them issuing a paper check, the memo line is auto-populated by Bilt with a message that basically says “John Doe’s rent for the month of X.”
You can add to that message, but there is no option to remove that bit.
Unlikely that this will cause anyone to reject the check, but worth knowing that’s how the check goes out if you’re using it for something else, such as if you have been using it for a while to pay your HOA that’s stuck in the stone age like someone I know…
I started renting again so I did the analysis on Bilt. I still don’t think it’s worth it for me. I have 9 months rent to pay @ 2500/month.
Bilt:
9*2500 = 22,500 points
4 other transactions, let’s assume restaurants at 6x first other month, $20, round up to 500. 500*9 = 4500.
Total points 27k with no fees.
Chase Ink VGC at staples since my apartment takes cc.
12 gcs/month for 12k URs/month
3% fee = 73/month, 657/9 months
12k*9 = 108k UR over 9 months
I get 4x the points with chase, not even factoring in a SUB which would double it for an amex plat AF.
You’re essentially paying $657 in fees for 81k UR points. Purchasing UR points at 0.8 cpp.
With the Bilt, you don’t even have to leave the house and bother with VGC (uncoorperative cashies/managers, VGC scams, risk losing the VGC… etc).
Yeah, I hate hate HATE grinding for points. My time has value (above and beyond a 3% cc fee).
That’s fair, but at .02 each 81k URs are worth $1600 or so. I’d still be almost $1k ahead
But you can’t just make up how much URs are worth. They are not worth $0.02 each
That’s a non-fun level of effort for sure. Putting my insurance through multiple GC’s a couple times a year is one thing, but 12 a month? Oof. That’s where I start remembering that I CAN pay for my travel, it’s just fun not to with a little effort. “Little” being the operative word.
Have had the card for exactly one statement period and am a fan. Killed it with the 5Xs offer for the first five days and was appreciative of the opportunity. Needed another currency for AA and partners and this suited my needs. Served a practical purpose the other day as well. Bangkok Airways doesn’t accept Amex and their payment system fought with my Chase Preferred Visa. With a quick text confirmation from Bilt, the airline processed my purchase and I earned 2Xs points.
Couple of strategic thoughts for the Bilt MC…
Can I pay a HELOC with the Bilt MC?
If Im the landlord, how do I get my tenants rent payments to credit to my Bilt Card?
I’m looking at my spending habits and having a hard time coming up with 4 transactions that I could move away from my other cards to Bilt in addition to rent to get the full bonus each month.
My apartment just increased CC payment fees while using Bilt waives them so they’re really pushing us to get a Bilt account, but if those additional transactions feel like they would cost more than actually paying the CC fee upfront.
Wondering if anyone else is in a similar situation to me here.
Amazon reload at 50 cents each FTW.
You actually need 5 purchases I believe, but you could simply load 50 cents to your Amazon account five times each month. Or use for small purchases. With a $2 purchase (for example), it doesn’t matter if you’re getting 1x rewards instead of 3x since the difference will only be 4 points. I’m not saying that it’s necessarily worth it for you to get the Bilt card, but I don’t think the 5 purchase requirement should be the thing that stops you.
Thank you for the suggestions. I’ll have to look into it.
At this point, my options are pay with CFU with a $60 fee (I would use BBP, but payment system doesn’t accept Amex), get Bilt and pay with fee waived, or pay with ACH via checking and not get any reward points at all.
I’m also moving out of the property next year, so I was caught in a little indecisiveness.
Bilt is 3x on dining so at worst (assuming a Citi Prestige, which you can’t get any more) you give up 2x since that’s a 5x card, or 1x if you’re using an AMEX Gold at 4x for dining.
That’s GOT to be worth avoiding $60 in fees.
The rent payment already counts as 1 of the 5 required transactions.
I asked Richard Kerr about charging multiple small Amazon transactions on a separate Bilt posting on your site. He never responded, but the Wells T&Cs state the following:
“Cardholders may not separate qualifying net purchases or rent payments into multiple transactions for the purpose of earning more points than would otherwise be available through a single transaction.”
Seems making 5 charges to hit the minimum for bonus spend might fall under this, but Bilt is otherwise somewhat inconsistent with what they are telling folks about its earning terms anyway (read HOA).
If I had rent payments I’d be all over the Bilt card. Beyond that the earning rates are good for dining and travel (great on rent day) and they keep coming out with cool promotions. If you are only getting a few cards I see the appeal for ongoing use – best card for transfer partners without an annual fee by far, great collection of partners anyway, lots of nice travel protections and status with it.
If I’m in the hobby and collecting cards though most of that is redundant, so I’m not sure what would pull me to Bilt over the spend and inquiry for another card without the rent aspect. I’m surprised at the utility payments excitement in the comments as almost every utility I’ve had accepted credit cards. Ink Cash earns 5X on internet, cable, and phone already. Wyndham Business earns 5X in all utilities. Only utility that didn’t accept credit cards was electricity where I’ve been paying my bill through Arcadia for a flat $5 fee (used to be cheaper fee but still less than Plastiq if you average $200 or so a month for bills). Majority of these don’t charge a fee but even for a few dollars it would seem 5X Chase or Wyndham points are more valuable than 2X Bilt on rent day. Of course those are all business cards so if you are avoiding those then your options are slimmer.
I agree with your analysis. These thoughts are why I haven’t signed up yet for the card myself despite recommending it to most people I know who aren’t into the game.
As to utilities: It just depends on where you live and who your utility providers are. In Ann Arbor, yes I can pay everything by credit card, but there are many places where that’s not the case.
Thanks Greg. I think the same thing – if you aren’t in the game the Bilt card is to me a better Chase Sapphire Preferred. Same primary bonus categories, similar transfer partners, both have primary rental car coverage. But you get better transfer bonuses, point earning promotions, and no annual fee with Bilt.
Bilt’s down side is it doesn’t have other cards to go with it to compete with the 5X of the Ink Cash and Freedom Flex. Which is probably fine by them, I don’t think that is the market they are trying to target yet (and they’d probably bankrupt themselves competing with Chase’s deep pockets if they did).
Thing is I don’t like MS/GC “grinding” to get that 5x (and I would be paying a 3% fee on a credit card or gift card, so typically CC payment of rent only makes sense when I am chasing a SUB).
I don’t like the MS grind either, I’ve bought 0 VGCs with my Ink Cash and Freedom Flex. Even without that they still provide a lot of nice 5X opportunities. Internet, phone, and “cable” (streaming services) auto-charge to the Ink Cash for 5X on a couple hundred in spend every month with no effort. Freedom Flex gives 5X on groceries and dining reliably two quarters out of the year, with the other quarters occasionally being useful (home improvement, Target, Amazon, etc.).
I have been buying third party gift cards that don’t carry a fee for planned trips – Disney gift cards and cruise gift cards to pay off the “free” offers from Caesars diamond status match. Sometimes that has been at Office Max when I get a 10% back Chase offer that will stack with the Ink Cash 5X earnings, otherwise in Q1 my Freedom Flex had the elevated grocery spend welcome offer that stacked with the quarterly bonus so I was earning 9X on those gift cards plus the fuel points at Kroger.
Without intensive effort there are still some outsized rewards you can get with the total Chase ecosystem.
Insurance is a big one for me, both personal and business. The Wyndham Biz card doesn’t cover insurance at 5x, as an example, so moved to the first of the month with Bilt at 2x.
If you go thru your monthly expenses, you might find more bills like that than you at first realize. As DSK posts below, it all adds up and even if you don’t hit the 10k point limit on Rent Day, you’re still earning more than what you would have previously. You could still pay the below with 5x using gift cards purchased with CIC but once you hit those limits (or don’t want the hassle), then Bilt is very useful if you use AA and Hyatt to any extent:
Amex BB is 2x everyday up to $50k. I prefer using that as my non bonus card. Tough to justify a x/24 spot to apply for Bilt with no SUB.
If AMEX transferred to AA or Hyatt, I’d certainly invest heavier in MRs. But I also don’t like those significant 20-30 transactions required on EveryDay cards for bonus points (over the 2x) The 5 transaction req on the Bilt is just about right for me since I also use it as a 3x dining card anyway. P2 & I have accumulated 140,000+ Bilt Rewards since the beginning of the year & most of that was from 2 Secret Subs.
Fair, accurate, & thoughtful post, Greg – finally a little love from this site for the card with the most potential earnings out there with a little planning